Taking the initiative

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now says that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative is a thing of the past that has outgrown its usefulness.

The Israeli leader went as far as to describe the Arab offer as “irrelevant”.

It would be interesting to see what features of the comprehensive peace plan presented by the Arabs is no longer of any use.

It will be recalled that the Arab plan offered Israel a historic plan that aimed to end the Arab-Israeli hostilities once and for all in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state on Palestinian soil with East Jerusalem as its capital.

What is outdated about these ideas is something that the Israeli leader has yet to explain.

True, the region has witnessed several seismic upheavals since 2002, including the Arab Spring, the ongoing Syrian civil war, the sectarian warfare in Iraq, the Israeli-Hizbollah armed conflict in July 2006, and the two Israeli wars on Gaza, in 2008 and 2014.

The rise of radicalism and extremism in the region also complicating developments for Arabs and Israelis alike.

Arguably, however, all these disruptions and complications in the region should be all the more reason to implement the Arab terms of reference for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

Given the undisputed proposition that the Palestinian crisis is at the root of most, if not all, other conflicts in the region, it stands to reason to restart the stalled peace process and breathe new life into the Arab initiative.

Israel cannot expect to be offered anything more comprehensive and conclusive to end its conflict with the Arabs.

The 2002 Arab initiative, through which the entire Arab world signalled that relations between Arabs and Israelis would have a peaceful and constructive base, is ideal.

If the 2002 peace initiative, and all the previous and subsequent peace plans for settling the Palestinian conflict are, in the eyes of Israel, wanting, it should come up with a “perfect” formula to resolve the conflict.

Yet, there are no signs that the present Israeli leaders have the slightest intention to do so.