The Middle East Tangle
Politics will be politics, with the lion’s share of issues settled unofficially. This said, what happens behind the curtains is often more important than the tip of the iceberg, and it might give you food for thought as well. This is true of the Qatari summit on democracy, development and free trade.
The composition of the delegates was most peculiar, with Russians missing. It’s questionable whether it was due to the organizational mess. It only need be noted that although the world has been accustomed to Russia’s presence at any forums featuring the Middle East since the Soviet times, Moscow isn’t obliged to make it the hard and fast rule of its policy. Nor is it to be guarantor of success of all initiatives doomed to fail, especially when the initiatives are not its own.
The presence at the Doha summit of the Israeli Foreign Office Chief, Tzipi Livni, one of the most likely candidates for Prime Minister in case the coalition government headed by the Kadima party remains in power, can be interpreted as follows: whatever the reputation of Israel with the Arab world, it has de-facto become part and parcel of the region. Its confrontation with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and the impasse of the Middle East Peace Process are regarded to be rather positive than negative by Arab monarchies and autocratic republics. They fear the block of Shiites and some of the Sunni radicals, which is now formed by Iran, not less than the Palestinians, who are unpredictable, well-trained and traditionally hostile to any local government; and far less does the Arab world fear Israel.
In the end, the Arab establishment makes no secret of the fact that it pins its hopes on Israel in its bid to confront the hegemonic ambitions of Iran and the Palestinian radicalism in the future. The Israelis are still not welcomed and are provoked when possible, as was the case in Doha, but they are reckoned with and can be addressed openly, rather than accidentally “run into in the corridor”. At the same time, the Arab world saves face: the initiative it forged, which was the dream of Israeli establishment in 1967, 1973 and 1982, allows for a dialogue, without running the risk of Israel’s endorsing it. The clash between the Jewish state and the Muslim Iran together with Syria, its ally, provides for an opportunity to strike a blow at the dangerous neighbor and “the fifth column in the Arab world” pulling the chestnuts out of the fire.
To conclude with, the Annapolis peace conference was attended by all Arab states’ delegates, including those of Syria, with only Iranians missing. They later attended the Arab League summit in Syria’s Damascus, but the majority of the Arab leaders, including those of Lebanon, refused to come. In Qatar’s Doha there were Israelis, not Iranians. This sheds light on the composition of future alliances and the character of tomorrow’s wars, which will shape the new Middle East. Whatever illusions the politicians and diplomats of the mediator states have, the new order in the region will be determined by the scale of power confrontation, not peace conferences.
Eugene Satanovsky, President of the Institute of the Middle East
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 17, 2008
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