In April 1981 Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia unveiled the "Saudi Plan" which then dominated the Arab League summit held in Fez, Morocco, in November.

Saudi Arabia's eight-point "peace plan", unveiled last August by Crown Prince Fahd, has been shelved, not buried, and it may well be brought down at the next Arab summit. The unprecedented Saudi effort to provide an outline for an Arab-Israeli comprehensive settlement was significant because the Saudis abandoned their usual caution by making public these "peace principles", but they orchestrated badly their coordination wit the US and with major Arab regimes. This was a major reason for the Fez debacle in November. However, rather than compromise, alter or abandon the set of principles which in their totality do comprise an admittedly ambiguous plan for peace, the Saudis preferred to leave the matter for later consideration.

This period of diplomatic lull -- which will certainly continue until Israel has handed back all Sinai to Egypt at the ed of April -- seems an opportune moment to compare the Saudi eight points with other historic peace initiatives. Judgements will vary as to how the Saudi points specifically square with U.N. Resolution 242, the Rogers plan, and the Brookings Report, but it is undebatable that the overall Saudi approach is quite compatible with each of these past attempts to devise an outline for a momentous Arab-Israeli deal. It is most striking that this Arab effort to outline the requirements for peace should have so many parallels with these earlier and largely American efforts. This basic compatibility explains initial US interest in the Saudi approach; it still could lead later this year to a coordinated Riyadh-Cairo-Washington initiative.

Israel's attempts to prevent the Saudi plan from gaining either American or European endorsement are of a pattern with its efforts to discredit both the Rogers plan and the Brookings report and to interpret resolution 242 as not meaning an Israeli withdrawal to approximately the 1967 borders. The Begin government has gone considerably further, most recently using the Camp David agreement as a cloak for discarding resolution 242 by annexing the Golan Heights and gradually incorporating the West Bank into Israel.

American strategists who want to shift US policy back towards seeking a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement believe that the proper course for the US now is to allow the Sinai aspect of the Camp David undertakings to reach its conclusion in April, to restrain Israel from taking any provocative actions in Lebanon, to encourage the moderate Arab states to reach a flexible consensus based on the Saudi plan (but called whatever), and to enlist European support for steps which would transcend the Camp David arrangements. But within the Reagan entourage there are two strong voices which still insist the only way forward is to proceed with the Palestinian autonomy part of the Camp David accords.

Few Middle East experts in Washington believe a comprehensive peace formula can be fashioned in the short term, but many are convinced the US must not tolerate Israeli efforts to freeze the region into a no-war, no-peace deadlock. This can only be prevented, they feel, by championing ideas that show the way toward an eventual compromise consistent with long-term American policies. If Egypt and Saudi Arabia can coordinate their policies after April and then apply concerted and continual pressure on the Reagan administration, the Saudi eight points could still form the basis of a peace formula. But just as the term "Camp David" has come to have a negative life of its own, so has the term "Saudi peace plan". If it is to live, it will have to be repackaged and renamed.

1) Israeli evacuation of all Arab territories seized during the 1967 war, including the Arab sector of Jerusalem.

2) Dismantling the settlements in the occupied territories.

3) Asserting the rights of the Palestinian people and compensating those Palestinians who do not want to return to their homeland.

4) Commencing a transitional period in the West Bank of Jordan and the Gaza Strip under United Nations supervision for a duration not exceeding a few months.

5) Setting up a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital.

7) Affirming the right of all countries of the region to live in peace and security.

8) Guaranteeing the implementation of these principles by the United Nations or some of its member states.

Mark A. Bruzonsky is a journalist and consultant specializing in U.S. foreign policy. He is Associate Editor of Worldview Magazine and editor of the book "The U.S., Israel, Oil and the Arabs" published by Congressional Quarterly.

Mid-East Realities

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/3/728.htm