Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army, opposition fighters and offshoots of al-Qaeda are turning Syria into a network of cemeteries and ruins; Lebanon is collapsing under the weight of hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving from its bleeding neighbor; the regime of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is hanging on by a thread; in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah lies on his deathbed; and Shiite Iran is stirring this boiling cauldron.  

Amidst this commotion, the leaders of the Arab states who convened on March 26 in Doha, the capital of Qatar, took the time and energy to address the diplomatic freeze in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the occupation and the settlements. As it does annually — despite the upheavals besetting the region — the Arab League summit made sure to reaffirm its peace initiative of March 28, 2002. And, as they do annually, Israel’s political echelons ignored the Arab leaders’ historic peace plan. The summit’s decision to send a special delegation to Washington in April to discuss ways of kick-starting the stalled negotiations, did not elicit any reaction, either.

It is no surprise that the ratification of this regional peace plan and the Arab League’s interest in promoting the two-state solution are being received with such a cool welcome; since the start of the Arab Spring, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been using the regional instability as a reason, or excuse, to entrench himself in a holding position on the Palestinian front and focus on the Iranian arena. And now, even though the Arab Peace Initiative is the product of pre-Arab Spring regimes, the leaders of the new regimes have again affirmed their peace plan, for the second time since the outbreak of the revolutions in the region. The initiative, which proposes that Israel relinquish the territories it captured in 1967, and in return enjoy normal relations with all the Islamic states, has become one of their anchors.

Middle East scholar, Dr. Matti Steinberg, who has been researching the initiative for years, poured over dozens of pages of Doha summit decisions and found no reference to the issue of the Right of Return — the one that deters most Israelis. The reference to the refugee issue is done so in passing, in reference to the Arab initiative, according to which the solution must be just and agreed upon, based on UN Resolution 194 (which refers to the return of the refugees to their places of residence and the restitution of their property). Steinberg stresses that in the announcement summing up the previous summit, held last year in Baghdad, the right of return was specifically mentioned alongside the Arab initiative, and so, too, in the announcement of the Islamic summit, which was held in Cairo last September (and quoted Resolution 194). One can thus infer that the Arab League delegation will focus its discussions in Washington next month on the territorial issue and will try to talk the US administration into forcing Israel to present its own map for a permanent arrangement. It marks the first time that the Arab League will conduct official talks with the United States about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of a regional arrangement.