Images show Palestinian children at sunset in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip (AFP)

The Arab summit was held in Beirut, Lebanon in 2002 amid the Israeli war on the Palestinian people, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the siege of President Yasser Arafat, and the invasion of Palestinian cities. It was the first summit since the signing of the “Declaration of Principles” known as the “Oslo Accords” in 1993. The summit agenda included discussing the “Arab Peace Initiative,” which considered peace the strategic choice for Arabs in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands occupied in 1967, in implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and in harmony with the Madrid Peace Conference decisions of 1991 and the principle of land for peace.

The Israeli response, led by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was to prevent President Arafat from leaving Ramallah to attend the summit, impose a full siege on the Muqata’a (the Palestinian Authority headquarters), where he was located until his assassination, followed by the invasion and reoccupation of all cities and committing massacres against Palestinian camps, notably the Jenin camp massacre in 2002, and the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

These horrific scenes were broadcast live during the Arab leaders’ meeting in Beirut. Despite these killings, arrests, destruction of Palestinian Authority headquarters, invasions, and Sharon’s plan to occupy cities, camps, and villages, persecute resistance fighters, assassinate activists, and destroy Palestinian infrastructure, the 14th Arab Summit Council approved the Arab Peace Initiative as a strategic choice and the principle of land for peace. The main question remains: what is left of the land?

Smotrich’s Map

The far-right Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich held a press conference demanding Israeli sovereignty over Palestinian lands. During the conference, he presented a map showing the land area the Israeli government should annex as uninhabited land, amounting to 82% of the West Bank, leaving 18% as cantons with Palestinian population density governed by a Palestinian authority, clans, or other entities, provided they do not threaten Israeli security. According to him, this applies the historic and religious Zionist right by annexing Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) to the Israeli state.

Smotrich considered the conditions ripe and suitable for annexation and sovereignty over the land, which may not recur. This step will preserve it for future Jewish generations and will enter Netanyahu into history books widely. This is the dream of extremist nationalist and religious Zionist parties ruling Israel and committing the worst massacres and genocide in Gaza for 22 months, without stirring global humanitarian conscience except for timid European stances overshadowed by protests and marches across their capitals, all on the eve of parliamentary elections in most of these countries.

Land for Peace Principle: Possible?

The right-wing Israeli government led by Netanyahu, known as the most extremist coalition in the country’s history, approved a program to end the conflict by ending the Palestinian cause, erasing Palestinian political identity, and displacing the people from their land either by killing, as in the genocidal war in Gaza with over 63,000 martyrs, more than 10,000 missing under rubble, and over 160,000 wounded, besides widespread diseases due to war aftermath, siege, lack of food and medicine, water contamination, and systematic collapse of the health system by Israeli occupation; or by displacement, which is happening in both Gaza and the West Bank through killing, destruction, siege, making Palestinian lands unlivable by starvation, land confiscation, daily settler attacks on Palestinian property, closures, and siege of Palestinian cities and countryside with over a thousand checkpoints in the West Bank.

The Israeli government also approved the “E1 project” to develop settlement infrastructure, linking settlements by roads and bridges, confiscating hundreds of thousands of dunams, and cutting off Palestinian cities and villages.

Given these settlement projects and plans implemented on the ground, is the land for peace formula still possible and acceptable? Netanyahu has repeatedly declared publicly his desire to see a Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and to reshape the Middle East. These statements align with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision of making Gaza the Riviera of the Middle East, displacing Palestinians, and expanding the Abraham Accords to enforce peace by force, meaning peace without land. So we ask: what remains of the Beirut summit and the land for peace principle? Will Arab leaders accept this? The coming days may answer these questions.