THE Middle East desperately needs a peace-maker. Will Barak Obama, the US President-elect, rise to the challenge? He will need courage, a clear strategic vision, and – this is the difficult bit –the readiness to use America's political muscle to persuade Israel and its many friends in America and elsewhere that the time to make peace has come. It has long been clear that, while the Arabs are ready for peace, Israel is not. It has shown little interest in the Arab Peace Plan of 2002, which offers it peace and normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League, if it withdraws to its 1967 borders. The Arab peace plan is still on the table. But powerful forces in Israel are still bent on expanding the borders of the state, whether for religious reasons or for considerations of national security. There is huge resistance – from settler lobbies, religious nationalists and right-wing strategists – to giving up the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Syria's Golan Heights, and a small frontier enclave in Lebanon, all conquered in the Six-Day war. Israel has had little incentive to return these territories because, ever since its peace with Egypt 30 years ago – and thanks to massive American military, financial and political backing – it has become immeasurably stronger than its neighbours. But the situation is changing – both for Israel and for its American patron. Deeply rooted in the local population, resistance groups have arisen – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza – which Israel has tried but failed to crush. By waging guerrilla warfare, these groups have even managed to acquire a certain deterrent capability vis-à-vis the mighty IDF. Hezbollah managed to check Israel's assault on Lebanon in 2006 and hold it to a draw – the first time an Arab force has scored such a success since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Hamas, in turn, has compelled Israel to accept a truce – fragile perhaps but still holding – although at great cost to the Palestinian population of Gaza, which has had to endure a cruel Israeli siege. Just this week, half the inhabitants of Gaza have had to make do without electricity because Israel suspended fuel deliveries to the Strip's single power plant. Yet, the oft-expressed Israeli view that there can be no political negotiations with Hamas because it does not ‘recognize' the Jewish state and is out to destroy it, no longer holds water. Just last Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh repeated that his government would accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and was ready to offer Israel a long-term Hudna or truce, if Israel recognised Palestinian national rights. Most observers believe such a Hudna could become a formal peace once a Palestinian state is created, and there was no further need for violence by either side. Quite apart from Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel faces a novel challenge from the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country of 70 million people, which has taken up the championship of the Palestine cause. Throughout the 1990s, and especially after 9/11, Israel and its friends pressed the US to attack Iraq so as to remove any potential threat to Israel from the east. But destroying Iraq had the unforeseen consequence of overturning the balance of power in the Gulf to the great advantage of Iran, which has thus emerged as a serious rival to both the United States and Israel in the region. Yet another important development which is transforming Israel's strategic environment is the rise of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as an Arab pole of wealth, high-tech modernity, educational endeavour – and considerable military power. One way and another, Israel's long-held policy of seeking to dominate the entire region by military might is beginning to look unrealistic. For all these reasons, many world leaders have concluded that it is time for Israel to end its occupation of Arab territories, give up its expansionist ambitions, and make peace with the Palestinians and with Syria and Lebanon, thus opening the way for peace with the whole Arab world. After years of conflict and bloodletting, the opportunities for a historic breakthrough are immense. For the United States, the stakes are also very high. Its uncritical support for Israel, its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its tolerance of settlement expansion on the West Bank, its indifference to the suffering of Gaza, its support for Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon – all these have served to fuel hatred of America. This is the ground from which terrorism grows. For America to be safe – for Al-Qaeda and its offshoots to wither away for lack of support – peace in the Middle East is essential, not just Arab-Israeli peace, but peace in Iraq and in Afghanistan, too. At a meeting last Sunday in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm Al-Shaikh, Tony Blair, the Quartet's representative, was asked for his views on the Arab-Israeli peace process. He replied, with evident fervour: “The single most important thing is that the new administration in the United States grips this issue from day one… There is a foundation. It can be built on. And it has to be built on by treating this issue as of fundamental importance, not just to this region, but to the world, from the very first day of the next administration.” The same call was made at Sharm Al-Shaikh by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In Paris on Oct 30, the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana declared: “The parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement are clear – and have been for some time. It is urgent – finally – to bring this conflict to an end, through persistent engagement.” France's President Nicolas Sarkozy never tires of saying that the creation of a Palestinian state in a context of Arab-Israeli peace is the only guarantee of Israel's long-term security. Sarkozy wants the EU to throw its whole weight behind an Arab-Israeli settlement. Only the United States has the power to persuade Israel that the time for peace has arrived – and only the US can give it the security guarantees some Israelis feel they need. This is Barack Obama's challenge. He knows what needs to be done. He is a man of stable temperament, who has shown that he knows how to control his inner demons. Can he now do the same for Israel, calming its lingering fears, tempering its exaggerated ambitions, as he brings it to the table? To do so he must not hesitate to intervene in Israel's forthcoming elections next February, a few short weeks after his own inauguration on 20 January. Only a strong signal of support from Washington for the Israeli peace camp will defeat the diehard expansionists and the hawks. Obama will soon have to learn the art of governance in a globalized, multi-polar world. But as President-elect of the greatest country of all, he must shoulder the world's problems. A peaceful Middle East, freed at last from the horrors of war, could be his greatest single achievement. __
