Editor's Note:
The Bitterlemons.org Web site, an excellent source
for essays, interviews and articles on the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, recently focused on
"Saudi Arabia's resurgent diplomacy" including
insights from Thomas W. Lippman, N. Janardhan, Toby
Jones, Michel Nehme and Afshin Molavi. We thank
Bitterlemons.org for permission to share these
essays with you. Today we present another essay from
the series with Middle East Institute scholar,
author and veteran journalist Thomas Lippman writing
about Saudi leadership in the region.
http://www.bitterlemons.org/
A New Regional
Leadership
Thomas W. Lippman
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia caused a lot of
heartburn in official Washington with his
speech [in March] at the Arab summit conference
in Riyadh in which he referred to an "illegitimate
foreign occupation" of Iraq.
The Americans had good reason to be distressed after
reading the speech, but not because of what Abdullah
said about Iraq. After all, he was addressing an
Arab summit conference; he could hardly have
endorsed the American adventure there, which
everyone in his audience knew he had opposed.
No,
what should have bothered the Americans was that the
ruler of an important longstanding regional ally was
so unhappy over US policy and performance in the
Middle East that he took the unusual step of
distancing himself publicly from Washington. Saudi
Arabia always prefers to express its displeasure
with the United States in private conversations and
diplomatic exchanges. Only rarely in the 60 years of
the alliance have Saudi leaders felt compelled to
issue a public challenge, most notably during the
oil embargo of 1973-74.
What was driving the king, senior aides said, was
that he sees the Arab world in turmoil, Arabs
shedding Arab blood, and American policies
contributing to the problems rather than solving
them. The Americans have failed to stabilize Iraq,
failed to contain Iranian influence, failed to bring
peace to the Palestinians and Israel, failed to
relieve the suffering in Darfur, failed to rectify
Syrian behavior, failed to protect Lebanon against
Israeli attack and failed to resolve the ensuing
Lebanese power struggle. Collectively, these
failures threaten the security of Saudi Arabia, but
more than that, in the king's perception, they
threaten the security of the entire Arab nation.
Distraught over the carnage in Iraq and over the
spectacle of Palestinians at war with themselves in
the struggle between Hamas and Fateh, Abdullah
concluded it was time for someone new to exert
regional leadership -- a role for which at the
summit conference he offered himself.
King Abdullah was in "a very emotional state" over
the infighting between Palestinian factions, his
foreign minister,
Saud al-Faisal, said in a
Newsweek interview. "He just couldn't believe
that Palestinian guns are turned against Palestinian
people and blood is shed and people are killed and
children are orphaned by them fighting against each
other while they're facing such horrendous treatment
from the Israelis. He just couldn't take that."
Abdullah is not seeking a full-scale rupture with
the United States, which his country cannot afford.
But he has for many months pursued policy
initiatives that deviated from Washington's
preferences because he did not like what he was
seeing. He
brokered the Mecca agreement between the
Palestinian factions, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad,
received Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinezhad in Riyadh and invited the Iranian
foreign minister to the summit conference.
All these initiatives ran counter to the American
policy of isolating Iran, Syria and Hamas. As
Abdullah has recognized, President George W. Bush
and Vice President Dick Cheney live in an imaginary
Middle East where people behave better if sent to
bed without supper. The king lives in the real
Middle East, where business gets done in
face-to-face negotiations. The British did not
recover the sailors and marines taken captive in the
Shatt al-Arab by refusing to talk to the Iranians.
Americans who take a longer view of the region found
positive elements in Abdullah's speech, as they have
in his recent policy initiatives. Perhaps his most
constructive point was that the mess in which the
Arabs find themselves is their own fault. Unlike
many of his subjects and their neighbors, he did not
blame Mossad, the CIA or the "crusaders." He did not
even blame Bush. He blamed Arab leaders, not
excluding himself.
Citing the violence among the Palestinians and in
Sudan, Somalia, and Lebanon, the king said that "the
real blame should fall on us: the leaders of the
Arab nations. Our permanent differences, our refusal
to take the path of unity -- all of that led the
nations to lose their confidence in our credibility
and to lose hope in our present and future." This
assessment, and his call for "a new beginning aimed
at uniting our hearts and closing our ranks", signal
a continued willingness to cut pragmatic deals that
could end some of the region's divisions, a vision
Washington would do well to share.
One of the pragmatic deals Abdullah wants to pursue
is a negotiated settlement between Israel and the
Palestinians that would bring about the "two state
solution" endorsed by the United States. As the king
made clear in putting together the Mecca agreement,
he does not share Bush's opinion that the two-state
solution can be achieved by refusing to talk to the
political group selected by the Palestinian people
to lead their government.
- Published 26/4/2007 � bitterlemons-
international.org
Thomas W. Lippman, a former Middle East
correspondent of the Washington Post, is an adjunct
scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington
and author of "Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile
Partnership With Saudi Arabia".
Published 26/4/2007 � bitterlemons-international.org
[Reprinted with permission of "bitterlemons"]
http://www.bitterlemons.org/
Edition 16 Volume 5 - April 26, 2007
