Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday that he believes a Saudi Arabian peace initiative could prove a breakthrough in the Middle East, but only if the Saudis and their Arab partners are willing to recognize Israel as a Jewish majority state.
Barak expressed doubt that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah would go so far. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and some other Arab leaders have said they would recognize Israel’s statehood, but no concrete Arab proposal has yet been made.
Barak said a move by Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with the Jewish state could help change attitudes across the Arab world. It would also give new impetus to the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he said.
Barak’s comments came in a wide-ranging interview in Chicago, where Barak said he was holding business meetings in his role as an adviser to EDS, the Texas-based information technology company.
Fearful of rising Palestinian violence and angry about the collapse of the Camp David peace process, Israeli voters ousted Barak and his Labor Party more than a year ago. They turned to Ariel Sharon, a former army general who promised to take a harder line with Arafat and restore security to Israel.
Violence has continued unabated, with the past few weeks proving especially bloody.
Barak chose to neither directly praise nor criticize Sharon and the military escalation that Israel has imposed to counter Palestinian attacks.
He said the Israeli armed response was justifiable self-defense. But he said Israel could lose “the moral high ground” he believes it seized in the eyes of the world by its good-faith negotiating at the U.S.-mediated peace talks.
Barak also said Israel should maintain “an open door for resumption of negotiations at any moment without any preconditions beyond the full absence of violence, based on the principles of Camp David.”
Sharon has rejected the Camp David negotiations as a basis for new talks.
In a spirited defense of his efforts to reach a deal with Arafat, Barak rejected criticism that he lost a remarkable chance at a landmark accord by trying to dictate a final offer.
Barak accused Arafat of refusing to negotiate and forsaking talks in favor of terrorism.
“In every serious negotiation in life, whether it is with your wife . . . or in business or in politics or statesmanship, there is a moment when you see in the eyes of the other side that he is trying to strike a deal,” Barak said.
“It does not mean that there will be no more delays or ups and downs. Maybe it will even explode,” Barak said. “But in the end you know that you have been through something real.
“The real problem with Arafat is that neither myself nor President Clinton found in him this character or willingness to make peace,” Barak said.
“Arafat does not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, and I emphasize the word Jewish.”
To Barak, Arafat is determined to keep alive a struggle to erase the Jewish state. If that cannot be achieved through armed conflict, Barak said, Arafat wants to do it politically: Make it so non-Jews will one day outnumber Jews in Israel.
For this reason, Barak said, the proposal that Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah is expected to put forward at an Arab League summit this month in Beirut could be critical.
“If they will tell their own people in simple Arabic that they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East, it will be a positive, important step forward,” he said.
Despite skepticism from Israel and criticism that the Saudi initiative is nothing new, the United States has seized on the proposal by Abdullah for Arab normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for Israeli return of lands captured in the 1967 war.
