That Saudi Peace Proposal Made Clear

Reportred:

Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, who was in Washington on Thursday, maintained that the Kingdom will not engage Israel until it leaves all land captured during the 1967 Six-Day War.


"King Abdullah's forthright initiative of 2002 laid the groundwork for an end to hostilities: if the Israelis withdraw from occupied lands, including East Jerusalem, to their pre-June 4, 1967 boundaries and address the refugee situation through mutual agreement, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference will end all forms of hostilities and commence normal and peaceful relations with the State of Israel," he added.

Though Turki is not part of the Saudi government, he is likely to replace his brother, Saud al-Faisal, as foreign minister in due course.

Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event, Turki emphasized that Saudi Arabia would refuse talks with Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.

"For us to take any steps toward any form of normalization with the Israeli State before these Arab lands have been returned to their rightful legitimate owners would undermine international law and turn a blind eye to immorality," he said.

The Saudi prince also questioned the legitimacy of the Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands. The settlements issues had resulted in a stalemate this week, after Both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators could not agree over the freeze of construction activity.

^

Rejuvenation

Rejuvenation is a pun for what Tom Friedman is doing. Tom is Jewish.

Not only did he most probably come up with most if not all of this plan many years ago to sell it as a Saudi initiative but he is now rejuvenating it:

Saudi Time:-

...If these talks fail, with 300,000 Israeli settlers already living in the West Bank, and with Hamas becoming ensconced with its own government in Gaza, talk of a “two-state solution” will enter the realm of fantasy.

...Even if the two sides swap land and 80 percent of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank get to stay put, 60,000 will have to be removed. Many will leave peacefully — if Mr. Netanyahu strikes the land-for-security deal he wants — but thousands will not. They will have to be forcibly removed from Biblical sites by the Israeli Army, and the process will not be pretty...Hamas will employ whatever violence it can to overturn any deal. It will not be pretty.

...Some eight years ago, in February 2002, I interviewed then-Crown Prince-now-King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his horse farm outside Riyadh. I shared with him a column I had written — suggesting that the Arab League put forth a peace plan offering Israel full peace for full withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem for a Palestinian state — when he feigned surprise and said: “Have you broken into my desk?” The Saudi leader said he was preparing the exact same plan [yeah, sure.] and offered it up — “full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations.”

...It is time to bring it out of the air. King Abdullah should invite Mr. Netanyahu to Riyadh and present it to him personally.

Abdullah need not go to Jerusalem, as Anwar Sadat did, or recognize Israel. [hey, why not? is there not to be peace which is all about "peace between peoples"?] He can, though, still have a huge impact on the process by simply handing his plan to the leader for whose country it was intended...Saudi officials have developed a reputation in Washington for being experts at advising everyone else about the hard things they must do, while being reluctant to step out themselves. This is their moment — to do something hard and to do something important.

First of all it popped up in 2007.

JCPA disassembled it.

And with the question of "refugees" fudged, and other matters, as Jonathan Tobin noted, this just won't do.

But Friedman actually gets paid in money and glory to write this claptrap.


P.S. See SoccerDad on this.


- - -

Call Them The "Three Saudi No's"

That's what Rick Richman calls them.

I blogged an excerpt from the press conference but Rick makes it compact:

no confidence-building steps for Israel, no endorsement of any step-by-step peace process, and no compromise on the uncompromising Saudi plan

Arab (What-Passes-For) Thinking

NYT reports:

Saudi officials and political experts say...The Arab countries...believe they have already made their best offer and that it is now up to Israel to make a gesture, perhaps by dismantling settlements in the West Bank or committing to a two-state solution.

“What do you expect the Arabs to give without getting anything in advance, if Israel is still hesitating to accept the idea of two states in itself?” said Mohammad Abdullah al-Zulfa, a historian and member of the Saudi Shura Council, which serves as an advisory panel in place of a parliament.

While not dismissing the possibility of some movement on the peace process, the Saudis say the Arab world made substantial concessions in the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed by a 22-nation coalition during an Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2002. That proposal offered full recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawing to its 1967 borders and agreeing to a “just settlement” to the issue of the Palestinian refugees.

Concessions?

After attacking Israel in unprovoked acts of aggression?

In 1947? Rejecting the UN Partition resolution and starting an intra-communal war.

In 1948? Invading nascent Israel by seven Arab countries.

In 1949? Launching terror attacks by fedayeen.

In 1967? Closing Suez Canal, dismissing UN troops, shelling Jerusalem.

In 1994? Initiating Oslo terror campaign.

In 2000? Faking Israel Temple Mount takeover and beginning Al-Aqsa Intifada.


Oh, and as for the Saudi/Tom Friedman Initiative, as it sneaks in Arab refugees, it's a non-starter. Jews can't live in Judea and Samaria but Israel has to take in those who sought its demise?


And they go on, those Saudis:-

A Saudi official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss details of the presidential visit, said that Arab nations might be willing to accept certain incentives to expedite the peace process, but only if they occur simultaneously with Israeli action.

“It depends on what the Israelis give,” the official said. “Israelis say, ‘We opened a passage.’ Come on, you open a passage, you close a passage. That is not one of the issues. Let’s deal with the major issues.”

Behind the Headline

Whoops, there gopes another "peace proposal", the Arab League one.

New York Times reports:-

Arab leaders will threaten to rescind their offer of full relations with Israel in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands unless Israel gives a positive response to their initiative, indicating the Arab states’ growing disillusionment with the prospects of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At an Arab League meeting next month in Syria, the leaders are planning to reiterate support for their initiative, first issued in 2002. The initiative promised Israel normalization with the league’s 22 members in return for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as the capital, and a resolution of the issue of Palestinian refugees.

and the Chinese news service has it this way:-

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said here Thursday that all negotiations at the Annapolis conference to restart the Mideast peace process had failed to bear fruit. Moussa, who was attending a two-day meeting of foreign ministers of South American and Arab countries in the Argentine capital, warned that the Mideast peace deal brokered at the U.S.-sponsored Annapolis conference last year has not achieved any progress due to Israel's adherence to its original policies.

Israel refused to negotiate on the Jerusalem issue or acknowledge the Palestinians' right to establish a state, said Moussa, adding that the Israeli government had adopted wrong policies against the Palestinians and refused to correct them, creating a major obstacle to any peace initiatives.

The text (here) is really cute, in an Arab way.

First point is that it "Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well". In other words, non-peace is all our fault. We've never made peace overtures, not even in our declaration of statehood?

Here, May 14, 1948:-

We appeal - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

Can any Arab state, league, organization or terror group match that magnamity?


The Arab League's plan's main operative section reads:-

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Those are unacceptable. They deny the history of the conflict, ignore Arab agression, rewards Arab terror, inadequately provides for Israel's future security and existence and Jewish character.

This is enough for me but for those wanting more, Mitch Bard does a nice summary of this "peace plan" and its faultiness.

A Little Truth

King Abdullah, like most Arab leaders Mr. Bush met, has not expressed full support for Israel living side by side with a Palestinian state, though he was instrumental in pushing through an Arab League proposal laying the terms for a peace that Israel has rejected. Mr. Bush, though, said the Persian Gulf leaders supported his peace effort, started in Annapolis, Md., in November.

“They want to see a deal done,” he said, adding that the United States had to overcome “years of disappointment.”

Source


Deal done or Israel dead?

P.S.

Mr. Zahar said that “Israel will also be wiped out,” adding “all must remember this when the Palestinian flag is raised one day.”

And What About Arab "Settlements"?

NYT reports:-

Saudi officials said a precondition of its attendance was that the conference tackle the four big “final status” issues that had bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979: the fate of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced to flee their homes in Israel, mostly before or during the 1948 war; the status of Jerusalem; the borders of a Palestinian state; and the dismantlement of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

And Arab "settlements"? In Israel?

Cannot we consider them illegal or, at the least, possible "switchers" for those Jewish revenant communities built in that portion of the Jewish historic patrimony originally intended to be the reconstituted Jewish homeland by the international community back in 1920-23?

Saudi Peace

Since this is going to be an issue, here are details:-

Official translation of the full text of a Saudi-inspired peace plan adopted by the Arab summit in Beirut, 2002.

The Arab Peace Initiative

The Council of Arab States at the Summit Level at its 14th Ordinary Session,

Reaffirming the resolution taken in June 1996 at the Cairo Extra-Ordinary Arab Summit that a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable commitment on the part of the Israeli government,

Having listened to the statement made by his royal highness Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which his highness presented his initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel's acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel,

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.

5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighbourliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity.

6. Invites the international community and all countries and organisations to support this initiative.

7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.

HonestReporting has these TALKING POINTS

As editorials and columnists discuss Crown Prince Abdullah's speech, it is important to consider the following points:

-- The Camp David-Taba negotiations were based on Israel retaining "settlement blocs" and not returning to 1967 lines. Is Abdullah demanding more than the Palestinian negotiators were considering?

-- Is Abdullah's plan an opening negotiating position, or are his demands non-negotiable?

-- The cornerstone of Middle East negotiations, UN Resolution 242, calls for Israel to withdraw from territory, but not "all" territory back to the June 1967 lines (that Abba Eban once called "Auschwitz lines").

-- Abdullah's plan calls for the redivision of Jerusalem.

-- Is the Abdullah plan a public relations ploy to ingratiate Western audiences? By sounding the trumpet of peace, the Saudis divert attention from the extensive Saudi involvement in the al Qaeda terrorist organization, where 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudis, and at least one entered the US on a Saudi diplomatic passport.

-- Can Saudi Arabia be considered an honest peace broker, given the revelation (also in Die Welt) that Saudi officials paid Iran $10 million to buy the weapons for the Palestinian Authority that were captured by Israel in the Red Sea? (not to mention their antisemitic publications industry - here and here, for example)

-- Over the years, Saudi Arabia's refusal to endorse the agreements Israel signed with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians slowed movement to regional peace. Are the Saudis ready to lead efforts to achieve a comprehensive regional peace -- including pressing Arafat to stop all violence and cutting off economic assistance to Hamas, of which the Saudi government is chief financial backer?