By Moshe Maoz
The interfaith conference King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia convened in Madrid on July 17 is the first such conference held by this religiously strict kingdom. Jews were among the participants, including a rabbi from Israel. In 2002, when Abdullah was still crown prince, he made a significant move toward Israel that was adopted by the Arab League’s 22 members: recognizing Israel, including diplomatic relations, if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian state is established with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Make no mistake, Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabi Islamic kingdom that controls Islam’s holiest places – Mecca and Medina – has not fundamentally changed its ideologically negative attitude toward Jews and the Jewish state. But like other Islamic and Arab regimes, the Saudi regime has changed and improved its attitude out of strategic, political and security considerations and out of a long-term realistic approach.
Indeed, the Saudis’ realistic attitude toward Israel’s existence is not new. Back in May 1975, King Khaled told The Washington Post that his country was prepared to recognize Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 borders on condition that a Palestinian state was established between Israel and Jordan (Haaretz, May 26, 1975).
This move was apparently influenced by Israel’s victory in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, after which Egypt and Syria accepted UN Security Council Resolution 338 (which also included Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967 that was accepted at the time by Egypt and Jordan). Resolution 338 meant indirect recognition of Israel
In 1981, at the Arab summit that convened in Fez, Morocco, Saudi Prince Fahd (who became king in 1982) proposed recognition of Israel in exchange for a return to the 1967 (1949) lines, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and compensation payments to the Palestinian refugees or repatriating them. The Arab summit rejected the proposal, but accepted it in 1982 after amending it to include the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leadership.
Twenty years later, in 2002, Saudi Arabia once again proposed peace and recognition of Israel in exchange for a return to the 1967 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and an agreed-on solution to the refugee problem (based on UN Resolution 194 from December 1948). This proposal, approved again in 2007 by the Arab League, was apparently influenced by the Saudi need to please the United States after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, and particularly out of the fear the Saudis and other Sunni Arab countries had of Shi’ite Iran, which threatened them more than Israel did. However, successive Israeli governments rejected or ignored these initiatives. They may have missed chances to advance comprehensive peace with Arab countries.
Moreover, it may be assumed that the solution to the Palestinian problem and the issue of Jerusalem could have also motivated quite a few Muslim countries to recognize Israel and improve their relationship to Jews. Evidence of such trends has been voiced by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid and other Muslim leaders. The invitation of Jewish delegates to the Madrid interfaith meeting also attests to an important Muslim trend to advance peaceful coexistence and religious dialogue with Judiasm. This trend has also been evident recently in Jordan and Qatar at the government levels, and in the United States and Europe in public and academic bodies.
It is important to encourage these pragmatic Muslim trends, which represent a centrist stream in Islam. This is a way to combat new extremist Islamic streams represented by the Shi’ite Iranian regime and Hezbollah on the one hand, and Al-Qaida and other radical Sunni groups on the other. These seek to destroy Israel and strike at Jews; in their actions and writings they embody anti-Semitic Muslim tendencies drawn from old Christian anti-Semitism and from tendentious interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith.
These fanatic Islamic elements endanger not only Israel and Jews, but also pragmatic Arab and Muslim regimes like Saudi Arabia. Accordingly, Israel and Saudi Arabia (and other Arab and Muslim countries) have a common interest in neutralizing and limiting the extremist Islamic influence and its deadly attacks.
One of the main ways of doing so is Israeli-Saudi cooperation toward a fair and agreed-on solution to the Palestinian problem and the question of Jerusalem.
The writer is professor emeritus in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Source: Haaretz, 03/08/2008