The Acceptance Speech of the Award “Walking the path of Peace”

by, Dr. Marwan Muasher’, Senior Vice President of the World Bank

I would like to thank Rateb and the board of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation for this great honor.  Rateb and I go a long way back.  We were both classmates in, out of all schools, Terra Sancta, or the Holy Land, college in Jordan. 

My journey with the peace process is sixteen years old, almost to the day.  I had been delegation spokesman and a member of the Jordanian negotiating team since the peace process started in Madrid, on October 30, 1991. I have chronicled this experience with all its successes and failures in an upcoming book which will be published next spring with the title: The Arab Center and the Promise of Moderation. 

One of the most difficult periods in my life was when the late King Hussein asked me to be Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel, right after the two countries signed a peace treaty on this same day, October 26, in 1994.  I was a firm believer in the need to achieve peace between the Arab world and Israel, and I had crossed many psychological barriers in my dealings with Israelis. But to be ambassador, to actually go and live there, in Israel—that was a leap I was not yet ready to take.  That dilemma largely reflected the difficulty of crossing the abyss that still exists between Arabs and Israelis.

Peace between Jordan and Israel was in many ways a leap of faith for my country and its leadership. It was also thus for me.  Many years have passed since I went to Israel as Jordan’s first ambassador. And the story of my time there is but one personal narrative that constitutes part of a broader national narrative. It is a story very much about leaps of faith and wise choices; both those taken and those not taken. Many taboos have since been broken, but so much remains to be done before Arabs and Israelis reach true and lasting peace.
   
Peace is not a prize that one state can win at the expense of another but a condition of being that must be enjoyed by all. Anything else is a recipe for ruin—for both Arabs and Israelis. Both must choose wisely, and both must abandon their idea that their national narratives are mutually exclusive. The thousands of years of history provide the Middle East with a rich heritage, but this alone cannot define its future. Indeed, this legacy stands in the way of such a future. We must choose wisely, and we must let go.

Years from now, when the history of the modern Middle East will be written, what will it be titled, “The Center Could Not Hold” or “A New Beginning”? Will the Middle East still be plagued by separation walls, suicide bombers, radical ideologies, and a never-ending occupation, or will moderation, democracy, peace, and diversity prevail?

I was privileged to have been part of an Arab proactive and moderate coalition that has worked tirelessly to bring peace to the Middle East.  Contrary to the common Western notion that Israel wants peace but Arabs do not, all the peace initiatives in this decade have been put forward by Arab governments:  The Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 and the Middle East Road Map.  Both have never been given a chance so far.  The radical elements on both sides, Arab and Israeli alike, have succeeded to derail the process every time it appeared to develop some traction.  For peace to prevail, the Arab and Israeli centers must agree on a solution that addresses the needs of both sides against extremists on either side who are advocating solutions  exclusive of the needs of the other. So far, extremist ideologies on both sides have managed to radicalize the moderates, rather than the other way around. Because of such tactics by Arab radicals as suicide bombings, the Israeli public has turned to the right and has lost hope for a peaceful settlement with Arabs. Likewise, Israel’s renewed focus on military solutions to political problems—exemplified in the incursion into the West Bank of 2002, the war on Lebanon in 2006, and the government’s policy of targeted assassinations and collective punishment—has exhausted popular Arab good will and helped turn Arab societies to the right.

Where do we go from here? Is the Middle East doomed to perpetual violence and instability? After so much bloodshed, and so many attempts to solve the conflict, one reality stands out: there is no military solution to this conflict. Both sides have tried it, and failed. All that remains is a negotiated political settlement to share both the land and fulfill the dreams of both communities. Fortunately, there is no need to start from square one. If anyone has doubts, one need only look at such documents as the Clinton parameters, the Geneva Initiative, or the Arab Peace Initiative to have a clear idea of what such a solution entail, and what both sides are prepared to accept.

The Middle East is a region accustomed to exclusionist policies and mutually exclusive dreams. Both Arabs and Israelis have been guilty of this. Whether on issues of peace, reform, or tolerance, both parties have not been successful at reaching out either to the other side or to their own societies. The history of the Middle East need not be an account of missed or lost opportunities but rather a reminder of roads built but not traveled, of a needed resolve to end this long journey of bloodshed.
   
This is also a call for Arabs and Israelis to embrace diversity in the region rather than demonize it as a destructive force, and to adopt policies of inclusion. If Israel wants finally to abandon its iron wall policy and be accepted in the region, it needs to accept, indeed work for, the right of Palestinians to live on their land free of occupation. And if the Arab moderates are to triumph, ridding themselves of the image their opponents paint of apologists for the West or compromisers of Arab rights, they must plant the seeds for a time when the peace process will end and the challenge of a robust, diverse, tolerant, democratic, and prosperous Arab society remains.

Thank you.

Marwan Muasher