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From No-Deal to a Deal
(Al-Ahram-Egypt) Abdel Moneim Said - In reaction to the U.S. Middle East peace plan, the call for "armed struggle" declared by Palestinian factions will contribute little to altering the Palestinian reality while adding another arena of violence to a region that has had more than its fill of foreign interventions, civil wars, popular uprisings, terrorist movements, funeral processions, and waves of refugees and displaced persons. From an Arab point of view, apart from the questionable pleasure of accumulating more international resolutions in our favor, approaching the U.S. peace plan as a framework for negotiations offers more practical potential than a vote in favor of the Palestinian cause in international forums. Choosing the negotiating path on the basis of the proposed plan offers the Palestinians the opportunity to improve many of that plan's conditions. The U.S. plan opens a way that is unavailable under a current situation characterized by a deepening inter-Palestinian rift, dwindling Arab energies and declining international interest. The Palestinian cause does not exist in a historical or geographical vacuum. Current Palestinian anger is totally understandable, but anger does not solve intractable problems. The writer is director of al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.