Shifting Sands of Peace in the Middle East

shifting sands of Peace i n the Middle East Moharned Sid-Ahmed I M u c h of the euphoria generated by the Camp David Accords has receded, despite the fact that relations between Egypt and Israel have been "normalized," and Israel has withdrawn from three-fifths of the Sinai. When the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was signed, President Carter expressed the hope that it would be the cornerstone for an overall Middle East Peace. This postulated that at least the Arab moderates would join the peace process. But today, nearly two years after Camp David, none of the relevant parties have done so. This miscalculation was followed by a succession of unforeseen developments, all of which had, to varying extents, a destabilizing effect on the region, complicatingthe peace process still further. Notableexamplesare Israel's increasingly uncompromising stand on the core issue of Palestine; the Islamic resurgence ; the anti-American, anti-Israelistance of the Iranian revolution; the reverberations sent out by the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan; the uncontrolled soaring of oil prices; and deepening economic and monetary instability in the world related to Mideast developments. With this complex mesh of conflicts, it is not easy to define relations of cause and effect-which crises determine the others, which are rooted in the region, and which emanate fromwithout. When thingsbecome so entangled, they can only be sorted out by turning back to fundamentals. CurrentMiddle East problems must once again be placed in the broader context of their international and historical coordinates. In other words, it has become necessary to define the basic parameters, both local and global, which have a bearing on the Middle East. By examining the mechanicsof their interaction, we can assess whether the outcomecan be compatiblewith an overallMiddle East peace. lndependence In earlier decades, the main thrust in the Arabworld was directed at wresting independence from colonialism. Independence at the time meant political independence,i.e., achieving the prerogativesof statehoodand sovereignty, and realizing the Arab longing for the restorationof a "nation." Colonialism, at least for the Arab East, was initially identified with Britain and France. After World War 1 1 , it came to include the United States, which had estabMohamed Sid-Ahmed is an editor and political writer for Al-Ahram. He is the author of When the Guns Fall Silent, an analysis of the October 1973 War published in 1976. 53 International Security I 54 lished a network of military pacts and bases all over the world, including the Middle East. Colonialism, now seen to be headed by the most powerful Western state, became identified with the West as a whole. In this understanding , Israel was perceived by the Arabs as an acute expression of this colonialism, not only limited to a military enterprise set up with Western backing and directed against the Arabs, but also having the character of a settler’s colonialism, usurping Arab land and evicting its Arab inhabitants. For the Arabs, the enemy was one: the West and Israel. Israel became the catalyst for the Arab anti-colonial struggle and was seen as a threat not only to Arab Palestine, but to the whole Arab “nation.” Opposition to Israel played an important role in articulating the pan-Arab orientation of the forces of nationalism in the various Arab countries. In the face of an undivided enemy, the Arab world itself had to become one. And so an ideology of pan-Arabism developed whose mass appeal transcended the Arab world’s division into separate states. The triumphant surge of Nasserism and Baathism testifies to the powerful impact this ideology had on the region. As confrontation with the West, and especially with Israel, became more acute, pan-Arabism grew progressively more radical and acquired the character of a full-fledged Arab revolution, while advocating “Arab socialism” and rapprochement with the Soviet Union and the communist world. Regional polarization between imperialism and Zionism on the one hand and Arab nationalism on the other was drawn into the global East-West polarization of the cold war period. However, the global East-West confrontation reached a critical stage with the development of nuclear weaponry and the threat of total mutual annihilation . This in turn triggered the event of...