Israel Matzav

Mitchell trying to sell 'Saudi plan' to Israel

We already know that President Barack Hussein Obama likes the Saudi plan for the destruction of the Jewish state. But how does he think he's going to get Israel to agree to self-destruct? Here's some indication.

American Middle East envoy George Mitchell told a Brookings Institute workshop a few weeks ago that the Obama administration plans to 'incorporate' the 'Saudi plan' into American Middle East policy. To that end, the Obama administration will try to convince Israel that the 'Saudi plan' offers it 'gestures' from the Arab nations under the initiative. The Arab representatives at the Brookings workshop were 'satisfied' with Mitchell's statement, but noted that the 'Saudi plan' is "a package deal and cannot be modified." In other words, once again, the Arabs are making demands and refusing all forms of negotiations.

I have told you many times - as recently as Friday - that nearly all Israeli Jews reject the 'Saudi plan.' That's why perhaps the most relevant part of this Haaretz report is the description of what the Brookings workshop actually was:

The organizers of the workshop, which began March 17 and lasted three days, were former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk and Danny Abraham, a Jewish-American businessman and peace activist. Indyk, who was a consultant for former U.S. president Bill Clinton, is considered a close associate of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The workshop dealt with the U.S. attitude toward Benjamin Netanyahu's new government.

Senior Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the U.S. State Department is preparing a plan to market the Arab initiative to Israelis, and will release a document highlighting the gestures that Arab nations have agreed to take under the initiative.

The idea behind the initiative, they said, was to "break down the Arab Peace Initiative into its details and not leave it as a purely theoretical framework," adding, "The Americans promised they will handle the negotiations and the peace process. This will not only be pressure regarding the general framework of the agreement as under George Bush, but taking care of issues at hand."

In other words, whatever Israelis were at this workshop were not representatives of the Israeli government (Danny Abraham is the founder of SlimFast and is not an Israeli), and in fact, the workshop was working in almost direct conflict with the views and interests of the government that Israelis democratically elected just one month prior to the workshop.

Note also that the Arabs now expect that Israel will 'negotiate' with the United States and not with the 'Palestinians' or the Arab countries. The Arab countries have presented the 'Saudi plan' as a non-negotiable plan to be imposed on Israel, and they expect that the United States will impose the Saudi plan on us. Note the last two sentences I highlighted above.

On Sunday, Jim Hoft ran a video of an interview with former Republican leader Newt Gingrich in which Gingrich accuses the Obama administration of having a 'fantasy foreign policy.' The idea that the administration will sell Israelis on the 'Saudi plan' is a fantasy - even President Shimon 'New Middle East' Peres is only willing to use it as a starting point for discussions and not to accept it without significant modifications.

While an Olmert-Livni-Barak government would have placed us in danger of having the 'Saudi plan' imposed on us, a Netanyahu-Lieberman-Barak government is less likely to allow that to happen. But the danger here is damage to our relations with the United States - damage that will be compounded the longer Obama stays in office.

Phew. I guess we're lucky Obama considers Israel an ally.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:58 AM