Foreign Minister tells global business magazine: “Hamas cannot be eradicated”
The Sultanate of Oman has called for an emergency international conference on Palestine, including all conflicting parties, with the aim of reaching a permanent ceasefire and ending the conflict to achieve regional and international peace.
Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi said Oman's initiative was similar to that of US President George H.W. Bush when he called for the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. Madrid hosted a series of multilateral negotiations that aimed to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. He said substantial progress was until it was tragically interrupted.
Writing in the global business magazine “The Economist”, the Foreign Minister pointed out that like all its neighbours, Oman was suffering the consequences of the deepening crisis in Gaza. The prospect of further escalation threatened the entire region and a ceasefire was a humanitarian and strategic necessity.
He said: “The step from ceasefire to emergency conference must come swiftly and decisively. Without a Palestinian state, the whole region is condemned to a constant cycle of violence, and the Palestinians will continue to live with the threat of annihilation.”
The Foreign Minister said Hamas cannot be eradicated: “Movements of national liberation like Hamas are too deeply rooted in their communities. Their cause will be kept alive however many militants die. So, if there is ever to be peace, the peacemakers have to find a way to talk to them. And to listen.”
He said there was an assumption that the people of the Middle East were so imprisoned by sectarian logic that they were incapable of making the kind of sophisticated judgments that the people of the liberal and democratic West were used to making. He said that was deeply condescending and factually wrong.
“Pluralism is not the privilege of a Western elite; it is a vital part of the history and present reality of the Arab world. The people of the region have minds of their own and make political judgments rather than just adhering to sectarian affiliation.”
He added that in Lebanon today, Hezbollah was the group that mobilised its forces and carried out military action against Israel: “Hezbollah, we are told, is a Shia party and it functions as a proxy for Iran. And that is supposed to explain what is happening.
“But it stops short of an actual explanation. In reality, Hezbollah enjoys significant popular and political support within Lebanon. That support comes from across the religious spectrum, and includes not just Shia Muslims but also Sunni Muslims and Christians. This support is a matter of political choice, not sectarian fidelity.
“I am not saying that the people represented in Western media as the bad guys are really the good guys; that’s just binary thinking. What I am saying is that bad and good aren’t helpful categories when trying to make sense of a complex and dynamic situation and act responsibly within it.”
The Foreign Minister stressed the importance of talking to all stakeholders with different interests and viewpoints, listening to them, and ultimately working with them to stop the catastrophe in Palestine.
He said: “The world has deferred the question of Palestinian statehood for far too long. Too many of those who speak in favour of a two-state solution regard this as an objective to be achieved in some distant future – as though in that future the fundamental realities will have magically changed to make possible then what is somehow impossible now.
“So, no more deferral. We have to deal with the reality we inhabit now. And that reality includes Hamas”.
Sayyid Badr pointed out that observers of regional affairs sometimes praised the Omanis as mediators, saying: “It is true that we supported peace initiatives starting with Camp David in 1978 then the Madrid Process in 1991 and the Oslo Accords in 1993, as well as the JCPOA multilateral nuclear accord with Iran, talks aimed at ending war in Yemen, and various hostage releases.
“But we are just facilitators, not mediators, for some infer that mediators sit in judgment. That is not the Omani way.”
The Foreign Minister said the conference called for by Oman must include everyone because everyone has an interest in reaching an agreement. He said Iran will need to make difficult compromises to be part of the process, but he expressed his confidence after dealing with Iranian officials for more than thirty years that the country's leaders were able to make such concessions.
He said: “We must also believe that there exists an Israeli leadership that can be persuaded to engage in good faith. The people of Israel deserve better than to live in a world shaped by the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 – a murder, perpetrated by a young Israeli extremist, that helped derail the peace process.”
He stressed that non-state actors must be engaged with, and they included not only Hamas and Hezbollah, but also the Houthis: “The Houthis, and before them other Zaydi Shias, have been a big factor in Yemeni politics for centuries. Like all Yemenis, they are Oman’s immediate neighbours. Today, they rule most of Yemen, which makes them the de facto government. Again, we must inhabit the reality we find ourselves in.”
The Foreign Minister added: “If I may offer an aside on the Red Sea, I am as certain as I can be that calm will prevail there if a ceasefire is agreed in Gaza. After all, the West is arguing there is no linkage, and a ceasefire would give the Houthis the opportunity to demonstrate precisely that there is.”
Sayyid Badr said an international conference might take place in Switzerland or Norway, for example, as soon as people felt comfortable to agree a plan to admit Palestine to the United Nations. He said he hoped many more states would recognise Palestine in the coming weeks.
The Foreign Minister said a conference could serve as a platform for the urgent negotiation of a comprehensive two-state solution and all that is required to guarantee it.
This is an unofficial English version of an Arabic report. To view the official Arabic text, click here.