In the context of United State’s involvement in the recent Gaza-Israeli conflict, I thought this interview between the Consulting Editor from Council on Foreign Relations and Mohammad Yaghi was an stimulating alternate perspective. As we have already examined, the US has been portrayed by multiple media sources as an integral player in future negotiations processes. Besides the worthwhile viewpoint on the issue on the whole by Yaghi, his advice on the inclusion of Arab Nations in the resolutions was a new solution for me. He explains that the the Palestinian Authority President lacks legitimacy in the face of Hamas and that negotiations will only prevail if they are opened to the Arab League.
His main point, it seems, is that Palestinians are angry and the country is divided--they are past the point of bilateral negotiations with Israeli. He believes that if peace is to be realized in this area, it must include other Arab countries because of the inherent connectivity of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I viewed this opinion, though it still includes the US, as a counter-Western perspective. Yaghi argues that Arab nations and Israel must come to a peace agreement with Palestine in order to neutralize other long-standing issues. He believes that it is from within this geographic area that peace can be achieved, but that the peace process is no longer a bilateral issue and should not be approached as one.
ok it's Iraq but it's interesting
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Here is a link to a blog put up by Morgan on a different Blog. There are a
number of entries that tie more to your topic than theirs. Enjoy.
15 years ago
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The fact that Yaghi even has to speculate about what Arab country will negotiate for Palestine is problematic. He said,
ReplyDelete"Maybe [The Arab League] can be in a committee that advises Arabs on the negotiations or the Arabs can negotiate and defer to this committee in which Hamas and Fatah would be represented, for example."
He presents this as one possible way of getting around the complications of Palestine negotiation without a representative political group. It seems to me that if the Arab League creates a group to negotiate for Palestine, that would also be problematic because it could avoid the fact that politics are a huge part of this conflict.
That said, perhaps this would be a step in right direction because in making a group of negotiators to represent Palestine, they would be attempting to grant Palestine agency that they do not currently have because their government has been marginalized for so many years by Western media, governments and by Israel.