A Compassionate Peace: A Future for the Middle East

A report prepared for the American Friends Service Committee; Everett Mendelsohn, principal author. Hill and Wang, New York, N.Y., 1982 226 pp. $6.95

Reviewed by Allan Kellum

In 1970, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) published a ground-breaking report entitled Search for Peace in the Middle East. This new 1982 AFSC book, like its predecessor, can expect no praise from Arabs unwilling to accept Israel or from Jews who reject a Palestinian state. The book, essential reading for those who desire a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, emphasizes that a compassionate spirit, if adopted by the conflict's participants, is a vital first step toward a reasoned and just peace. Stephen Cary, AFSC board chairman, makes this premise explicit in his forward to the book. "There will never be peace for either Israeli or Arab," said Cary, "without the effort to understand the measure of legitimacy in the enemy's views and a willingness to seek accommodation with him."

Mutual recognition between the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO) and Israel is the compromise that the report views as politically viable. The trade-off would be for the PLO to "recognize Israel as a state and make peace with it in return for Israel's recognition of the right of Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

The Core Problem

The book makes the now-familiar point that "the core of any solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the resolution of the Palestinian problem," and also advocates that rather than have outsiders impose that solution, the Middle Eastern parties themselves should "assume greater initiative in designing and pursuing steps to peace." At the same time, the report calls upon the Soviet Union and the United States to adopt an explicit policy of superpower non-intervention in the area. Viewing the practice of using the region as a U.S.-Soviet testing ground as "fundamentally wrong," it urges Washington to cease placing primary emphasis on military and strategic considerations. In its place, the report calls upon U.S. policy-makers to formulate a compassionate policy that seeks peace "because it will serve those who suffer from war and conflict, and to aid political and economic change because it will relieve the burdens of oppression and poverty."

Three specific changes in U.S. policy sought by the AFSC study are: 1) that the U.S. cease its role as an arsenal for Mideast countries, 2) that it initiate a dialogue with the PLO, and 3) that it strengthen its opposition to Israeli annexationist policy by reducing U.S. aid to Israel in direct proportion to the amount Israel uses on settlements in the occupied territories.

Unlike President Reagan's Middle East peace initiative, the AFSC authors do not rule out an independent Palestinian state. Nonetheless, they acknowledge that geography and politics will necessitate that such a state have some association with Jordan and, in the words of the report, it "would have to depend heavily on Jordan for political and economic assistance."

Interestingly, some portions of the Reagan initiative are among the peace initiatives that the AFSC book lists as steps facilitating a transition toward a Palestinian state. Those steps: 1) dropping Begin's "narrow and restrictive definition of autonomy," 2) an Israeli freeze on further settlement activity, 3) a halt on Israeli annexationist policy and practices in the occupied areas during negotiations and the transition period, 4) peace initiatives by Palestinians and other Arabs in which they are "forthright in their willingness to recognize Israel," and 5) the U.S. "should undertake a dialogue with the PLO."

On all of these points the U.S. has now stated or demonstrated some measure of commitment. On the fifth point, talking with the PLO, the U.S. commitment remains conditional but the indirect negotiations that Ambassador Habib conducted with the PLO may be a harbinger of the direction U.S. policy will take.

Untangling the Web

Although this review has focused largely on the report's conclusions, the book's principal value is in its usefulness as a study guide to the tangled web of Middle East politics. It untangles the complex strands in its simple but not simplistic chapters on topics such as Lebanon, oil, the arms race, Iran, Afghanistan and Soviet and U.S. policies, to name a few. The success with which the book elucidates these topics is noted by former Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders, who calls it "an impressive, concise review in depth of the full range of issues facing the United States in the area from Cairo to Kabul."

The book's appendix and bibliography also enhance its usefulness as an educational resource. The annotated bibliography guides the reader to the handful of other sources that the authors of the AFSC report consider most important in each subject area. The nine documents in the appendix are those that are central to the peace process. including U.N. Res. 242, the Camp David Accords, and the Fahd Peace Plan. These features, as well as the book's readability, are evidently the reasons that several universities are ordering the book, already in its second printing and soon to be released by Penguin Books in the United Kingdom.

Allan Kellum is Editor of the Mideast Observer.