Seven Questions: Twilight of the Arab Moderates

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images Endangered species: Marwan Muasher says Arab moderates must learn to apply moderation across the board or face extinction.

Foreign Policy: Youve just written a book called The Arab Center. What do you mean by the Arab center, and what are you trying to get across in the book?

Marwan Muasher: Most people dont think there is a center in the Arab world. The book is a firsthand account of my own experience and the efforts of the Arab center to bring about a peaceful end to the Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 20 years or so. This center is not holding precisely because it is focused only on the peace process. Moderates on peace are not moderates on other issues of concern to Arab citizens, such as political reform, governance, and cultural diversity, and moderates on reform are not also always moderates on peace. For the Arab center to hold, it needs to apply moderation across the board.

FP: How would you classify the Muslim Brotherhood, which has its largest branch in Egypt, but also a significant presence in Jordan?

MM: I actually differentiate political Islam into at least three categories. The first category is the exclusionist types. These are people that are not concerned with negotiation or compromise, people who are at war with the whole world, not just the Western world, but with other Muslims. And these are of course the al Qaeda types. The second is groups that are violent as a result of the occupation of their countries, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, and have recently started entering the political process. Then you have your third, which have been peaceful all along, have never carried arms or employed violent tactics, and have been part of the political process all along, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan or the Islamists in Morocco.

You cannot deal with all groups the same way. The first groupthe al Qaeda typesneeds to be fought because they dont believe in compromise and negotiation. The second group needs to be encouraged to migrate to the third group, to give up their arms and pursue their objectives through peaceful means. And, of course, the third group needs to be accepted as part of the political process.

FP: Many people fear that until you have a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its too soon to open up the political process. What happens if there is genuine political reform and the main beneficiaries are groups like the Muslim Brotherhood?

MM: I dont subscribe to this. The Arab-Israeli conflict has not been solved for the last 50 or 70 years, and the Islamists and some of the radical opposition have not been weakened by a continuation of the status quoin fact they have been strengthened by it. Today, the argument in the Arab world is between two schools of thought. One says that if you open up the system, the Islamists come in. The other school of thought, to which I subscribe, says that if you dont open up the system, the Islamists come in.

FP: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has recently shifted gears and called for renewed dialogue with Hamas on a unity government. Is this a sign that the Palestinian Authority is giving up on the peace process?

MM: I dont see it as giving up on the peace process at all. If you look at all the polls, a majority of Palestinians want a peaceful, negotiated end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Fortunately, the conflict has been negotiated and renegotiated a number of times, and so everyone knows the parameters of what a final settlement will look like. What is needed is the political resolve to make it happen.

FP: As a lot of analysts are pointing out, though, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is dealing with a corruption scandal and is extremely unpopular. Mahmoud Abbas is weak, and U.S. President George W. Bush is leaving in January. How can you foresee that the political resolve will be there this year?

MM: Well, Im not sure it will be there this year. All Im saying is that we sometimes forget that when [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin passed Oslo II in the Israeli Knesset, he did so by a vote of 61-59, and Rabin is not considered to be a weak Israeli president. You are never going to face ideal conditions, so I think the time has come for the international community to put forward a solution. This is precisely the concept behind the Arab peace initiative: Israel would sign a peace deal with all 22 Arab states, in which the security of Israel as well as that of the Palestinians and everyone else is guaranteed by the whole Arab world, and Arab land of course goes back to the three Arab countries. Such an agreement, when put to the test in both camps, would pass overwhelmingly.

FP: If you sat down with John McCain and Barack Obama, what advice would you give the two U.S. presidential candidates about the Middle East?

MM: I would say two things. One is that the best support the United States can give to moderation in the Middle East is through an active engagement in the peace process and bringing that [conflict] to an end very soon. I would also say that if the United States hopes to bring about a settlement, the president needs to do that in his first term, not in his second, when he would be seen as a lame duck by everybody.

FP: And what about on the reform front, on the democratization agenda?

MM: This is really by and large an Arab responsibility. I understand that reform does not happen overnight, and that the radical groups or the political Islamists have a head start of 40 or 50 years over everyone else. But the solution is not a continuation of the status quo. Political systems need to be opened up, even if gradually, but seriously, so that Arabs are given not just two choices, but third and fourth choices as well.

Marwan Muasher is the former foreign minister of Jordan and author of The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).