Israel's official response to the Riyadh Declaration

According to today's New York Times:

Israel reacted with a degree of ambivalence to the vote on Thursday. A statement issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry stopped short of endorsing the proposal. “Israel is sincerely interested in pursuing a dialogue with those Arab states that desire peace with Israel, this in order to promote a process of normalization and cooperation,” it said. “Israel hopes that the Riyadh summit will contribute to this effort.”

It said that for a successful two-nation solution, “a direct dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians is necessary.”

The Arab leaders weren't exactly thrilled with Israel's reaction to their declaration:

“This does not express a positive stand of a country that wants peace,” Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister was reported as saying.

“The Arab world is in a state of agitation and cannot accept the way of procrastination any more," the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told reporters.

But as the Times went on to note:

Deputy Prime Minister appeared on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera to encourage Arab and Israeli leaders to hold direct talks on peace. “Let’s sit together as we are supposed to and work on it as we did before with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians,” he said.

Why not bring all the interested parties to the negotiating table?

The Riyadh declaration: Does this present a historic opportunity?

The leaders of the Arab nations concluded their two-day summit in Riyadh by issuing a declaration that according to the Reuters' report, "endorses an Arab peace initiative launched in 2002 but makes no direct mention of key issues such as the fate of Palestinian refugees."

According to Reuters, these were the key excerpts of the statement:

- (The summit) "affirms a just and comprehensive peace as a strategic option for the Arab nation and the Arab peace initiative that draws the right path for reaching a peaceful settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on the principles and resolutions of international legitimacy and the land for peace formula."

- (The summit) "stresses the importance of freeing the region from weapons of mass destruction without double standards, warning against starting a dangerous and destructive nuclear arms race in the region and emphasising the right of all countries to peaceful nuclear power."

- (The summit) "decides to spread the culture of moderation, tolerance, dialogue and openness, to reject all forms of terrorism and extremism as well as all exclusionary, racist trends, campaigns of hatred and endeavours to question our humanistic values or defame our religious beliefs and holy places, and to warn against growing sectarianism for political purposes that aims to divide our nation and ignite destructive sedition and civil strife."

I haven't seen the official Israeli response yet to this declaration but political consultant Zalman Shapira had this to say in an editorial piece in the Israeli daily Haaretz:

For the first time in the history of the conflict, not only Egypt and Jordan but the entire Arab League is proposing peace, but Israel is turning its back.

Has something changed in the Arab world? Have the Arabs really changed?

His conclusion? "It is not the Arabs who have changed, but the circumstances." As Shapira writes:
A new enemy is confronting the Arab elite, even more frightening and dangerous than Israel. Radical Islam threatens not only the public survival of the elite, but its physical survival as well. Ostensibly the military-civil establishment is still in control, with the support of the intellectual elite, but the masses are already captivated by radical Islam...

Every society needs an ethos to survive properly. With the help of the ethos the elite maintains its control over society...The ethos of Islam is coming back into power. When the ethos changes, so do the elites. At the end of the era of Mubarak, Assad and the other secular rulers, the victory of Islam will be unavoidable, either through elections or through a popular Iran-style revolution.

That is the reason for the Arab elite's desperate cry for peace. It is also the reason for the Saudi initiative and for the willingness of the Arab League for a normalization with Israel. The Arab elite is convinced... that Israel Defense Forces activities in the territories are causing unrest among the masses. Arab satellite television, which broadcasts from every corner of the territories, is bringing the victims of the intifada into every home in the Arab world. This unrest is fertile ground for the growth of radical Islam.

Shapira argues that:

[Israel] cannot stop the domination of Islam, but it must prepare for its advent. Israel's national interest requires determining the borders of the country and getting them recognized by the Muslim world before the Islamic storm floods the region. Only legitimate borders will constitute an impenetrable obstacle to radical Islam.

He goes on to suggest that Israel's only hope to negotiate such borders now lies with the Arab League because:

Israel's only partner, the representative of Palestinian nationalism, Fatah, is out of power. Hamas, which represents radical Islam, is not a partner for setting the final borders due to its refusal to recognize Israel.

Shapira suggests that because the Arabs face a new reality themselves, namely the ascendance of revolutionary Islam, they are now themselves eager for the first time in history to work out a peace plan:

The Arab countries will help to reach diplomatic arrangements and to make peace in the Middle East because the Arab elite believes an end to the conflict will contribute to stopping radical Islam and checking Iranian influence in the region.

In all Israel's 59 years there has not been such a favorable diplomatic atmosphere for ending the conflict. This is a final historic opportunity before the Islamic storm sweeps away the last vestiges of moderation in the Middle East.