Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

There will be no settlement in Iraq without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and without talking to Syria and Iran, so there needs to be a whole Middle East peace settlement. It is perfectly possible to see the key outlines of such a grand bargain.

One aim should be the establishment of a federal Iraq, not imposed by the West, but facilitating efforts by the Iraqis themselves to find it. Though federation has been scouted as a Western idea, it is in fact a development of the originally separate Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra which prevailed for centuries before the Baathist dictatorship of Saddam was forced on the country in the 1960s.

The Israeli-Patestinian conflict has to be ended by establishing a fully independent Palestinian state within approximately the 1967 borders, together with a guarantee of Israel’s frontiers and an internationally patrolled demilitarised zone along its borders with Palestine and Lebanon for a lengthy period (maybe 15-20 years).

All Western forces have to be withdrawn from the Middle East over a 5-10 year period, in return for a guarantee by the oil-producing states of an uninterrupted supply of oil. At present, the US-UK occupation is actually fuelling the insurgency and driving the suicide bombing, which was unknown in Iraq before the occupation. It will require both a political turnaround by a new US Democratic President in 2009 and a major switch in the West away from fossil fuels.

The most difficult part of an overall settlement is the negotiation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. This would require the nuclear disarmament of Israel in return for Iran (and other Middle East countries in its wake) giving up its nuclear weapons programmes. This would require close supervision by the International Atomic Energy Authority, armed with intrusive powers of inspection and back ed by sanctions. If Israel categorically rejects such a bargain, it is difficult for the international community to deny Iran the right to develop its own nuclear weapons, and nuclear proliferation cannot be prevented. The Middle East is the test case for the deal at the heart of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that in return for pledges (enforced by open inspections) by the non-nuclear powers not to develop nuclear weapons, the existing nuclear powers would dismantle theirs.

The suspended customs union between Israel and Palestine should be re-activated and extended to Jordan and Lebanon, in order to establish a Middle Eastern common market. Part of a grand political bargain would be the provision of extensive reconstruction funding.

These may seem giant, unreachable steps, but at this point 5 years on from the invasion the impasse in Iraq plus the real negotiation of a multilaterally owned settlement for the whole Middle East make these steps not only realistic, but the only practicable way forward.