Talking Turki

In an op/ed column in last Friday's Financial Times, Turki al-Faisal (photo above), former Saudi intelligence director and ambassador to the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland, warns of jihad if the Obama Administration doesn't support the Saudi proposed solution to the Mideast conflict:

Mr Obama should strongly promote the Abdullah peace initiative, which calls on Israel to pursue the course laid out in various international resolutions and laws: to withdraw completely from the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, returning to the lines of June 4 1967; to accept a mutually agreed just solution to the refugee problem according to UN resolution 194; and to recognise the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, there would be an end to hostilities between Israel and all Arab countries, and Israel would get full diplomatic and normal relations.

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over "this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children" in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom's primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed.

So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain. As the world laments once again the suffering of the Palestinians, people of conscience from every corner of the world are clamouring for action. Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel.

One problem with the Abdullah peace initiative seems to be that Israel already is, de facto, at peace with Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries. Mr. al-Faisal's threats of jihad notwithstanding, I doubt Israelis lay awake at night worrying about waves of Saudi jihadis infiltrating Israel's borders¹. What the Israelis probably do worry about are rocket attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah, and the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Since the Abdullah initiative doesn't include Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, it's not apparent how it would address those Israeli concerns. It's true that there would be other benefits to Israel from a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, e.g., trade and tourism. But the two Arab countries with which Israel already has peace treaties, Egypt and Jordan, aren't major trade partners of Israel, according to the CIA World Factbook.

It's also not readily apparent how the Arab states would benefit from a peace treaty with Israel, or, for that matter, from peace between Israel and the Palestinians. As an article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine ("Revolution, Facebook Style"):

From Amman to Riyadh, governments have long viewed protests against Israel as a useful safety valve to allow citizens to let off steam without addressing grievances closer to home.

Wouldn't a peace treaty remove that safety valve?

The photo above of Turki al-Faisal comes from BYU's website.

¹Significant numbers of Saudi jihadis have, in fact, infiltrated Iraq's borders in the past few years, but Iraq shares a large land border with Saudi Arabia.

This Week's Other Big News from the Mideast

From the Lex Column in yesterday's Financial Times ("Holy Hydrocarbons"):

An old joke in Israel says that Moses turned left when he should have turned right during his desert wanderings. After all, he had the rotten luck of finding almost the only country in the Middle East virtually bereft of oil and gas.

In a piece of news this weekend overshadowed by the ceasefire agreement in Gaza - but with perhaps equally important security implications - a major natural gas find was announced 90km off the coast of northern Israel. Nobel Energy of the US, which owns a 36 per cent interest, called it the biggest in the company's history, saying the lower bound of the reserve may be 3,000bn cubic feet.

As sweet as such a discovery is for a small country whose right to exist is denied by most of the leading owners of the global energy reserves, it is a bitter pill for the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority. BG owned a major stake in the field and, reportedly against the objections of its country manager, allowed its rights to lapse without compensation three years ago. Instead, it focused on its holdings in Egypt and off the shore of the Gaza Strip, where it invested amid optimism over the peace process.

Even after Hamas won an election in 2006 and took control of Gaza in 2007, BG's negotiations over selling gas from GAza to Israel, which seeks to plug a looming supply gap, continued. Hamas opposed the deal as an "act of theft", both because Israel was the buyer and because the proceeds would have gone to the Palestinian Authority. Negotiations broke down over price in late 2007.

Along with its disastrous December rocket barrage, this is another Palestinian own-goal. Noble's new discover could supply Israel for decades. BG, meanwhile, is left supplying gas-rich Egypt, a much less lucrative prospect. Perhaps Moses had a sense of direction after all.

This brings to mind the late Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban's quip¹ that the Arabs of Palestine "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity".

The photo of the natural gas rig above is from Noble Energy's website.

¹That line has been quoted frequently recently, including in this Economist leader from a couple of weeks ago, "The Hundred Years' War".