Israel Matzav: 'Israel would be crazy to refuse a deal'

Sunday, November 16, 2008

'Israel would be crazy to refuse a deal'

Times of London Jerusalem columnist Uzi Mahnaimi (follow those two links for previous Mahnaimi stories that have turned out to be the delusional ravings of a leftist lunatic) is reporting on Sunday that President elect Barack Hussein Obama is going to throw his support behind the 'Saudi plan,' which would ostensibly have Arab countries recognize Israel in exchange for Israel's surrender to the 1949 armistice lines (also know as the Auschwitz borders).

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a senior Obama adviser. [I wonder if that adviser is Robert Malley. CiJ]

The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, commended the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York.

Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: “I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people.”

A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory. They included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brzezinski will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London.

Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined in the appeal. He said last week that the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was “a way to psychologically change the mood of the region”.

Advisers believe the diplomatic climate favours a deal as Arab League countries are under pressure from radical Islamic movements and a potentially nuclear Iran. Polls show that Palestinians and Israelis are in a mood to compromise.

The advisers have told Obama he should lose no time in pursuing the policy in the first six to 12 months in office while he enjoys maximum goodwill.

Let's start with the Saudi plan itself and why it is unacceptable and then we'll move on to what - if anything - the Arabs are really offering.

The Saudi Peace plan of February 2002 was re-launched by the Arab League in March 2007 in Riyadh as the Arab Peace Initiative, and calls for a full Israel withdrawal from all territories taken in the Six Day War, including east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, in exchange for normal ties with the Arab world. [Those 'ties' are probably not worth much more than our ties with the Egyptians. Egypt continues to shun tourism to and business with Israel and continues to conduct war games that posit Israel as the enemy. CiJ]

It also calls for a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194, but stated that the Arab League would back any plan on the matter agreed by Israel and the Palestinians.

UN General Assembly Resolution 194 from 1948 states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so." [It would mean the end of the Jewish state if all of the third and fourth generation 'Palestinians' who claim 'refugee' status were permitted to return here. CiJ]

Mahnaimi claims in the Times that the Saudi plan would give "Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem." It would do the latter two things, but it definitely would not give Israel an effective veto on the return of 'Arab refugees' expelled in 1948 and their descendants.

And that assumes that giving away the entire store would bring 'peace.' But alas, it would not. Iran isn't going to give up its desire to wipe out Israel in return for adoption of the Saudi plan. And neither will Hamas or Hezbullah. For that matter, even 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President ~~Mahmoud Abbas~~ Abu Mazen and his Fatah henchmen would regard it as yet another phase in the destruction of Israel.

Given that this is coming from Mahnaimi, I'd say it's not 100% certain that this will be Obama's policy. After all, as I noted above, Mahnaimi has gone out on a limb with stories that were inaccurate in the past (for those who skipped the first two links, please go back and read them now). On the other hand, given that this is Obama and he's already decided that the 'solution' to the 'Middle East' is for Israel to surrender all the territory it liberated in the defensive war of 1967, this Mahnaimi story may have more to it than others in the past.

More here.