From the Times UK:
Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.
Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.
The proposal gives 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.
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.
Pretty sweet.
“Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.“
Good to see that Obama has finally caught up with the Arab League, who have made exactly this proposal repeatedly since 2002.
“the president-elect said privately it would be ‘crazy’ for Israel to refuse a deal that could ‘give them peace with the Muslim world’“
The Israelis have repeatedly refused to even discuss just such a deal for the last six years. It’s not that they’re crazy, it’s that expanding their territory and continuing to brutalize Arabs means far more to them than peace. They are addicted to violence and abuse of others.
Oh please. That would be great news.
If Obama truly intends to put serious pressure on Israel to accept the terms of the Saudi plan, that would be fantastic.
I would caution, though, that the Times is not the most reliable of sources when it comes to these things. For example, it has been predicting an imminent war on Iran, based on ‘high level official sources’, for well over a year now.
I can’s see AIPAC being very enthusiastic about Israel withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders! Obama’s pushing that idea would damage his presidency, before it even started, more than Bill Clinton’s wanting to let gays openly be in the military, which got his presidency off to a rough start.
What would obama do next: say fuck you to the insurance industry?
With an economy in drastic need of massive intervention and two wars to be resolved in one way or another, I really don’t see Obama doing much about I/P in his first term.
I’m not so sure about that. Obama doesn’t owe anything to AIPAC, and he has an army of supporters out there who will go after that lobby if they try to smear him. His supporters are also available to damage the re-election of any Democratic congressmen who go too far to help AIPAC smear him. That’s the thing people haven’t got their minds around yet. Obama created an organization that is independent of the big traditional lobbies. He is a force to be reckoned with independently of his status as President.
I’ll be very happy if you turn out to be right about this.
“Obama doesn’t owe anything to AIPAC, and he has an army of supporters out there who will go after that lobby if they try to smear him.“
Oh, yeah, AIPAC has no hold on HIM!
That’s why as soon as he had the nomination sewn up the first thing he did was make a mad, headlong dash to grovel embarrassingly at AIPAC’s feet, and make promises so extreme that he actually had to back away from some of them later.
And that’s why he had to throw his supposed friend, Rashid Khalidi, the anything-but-radical Palestinian-American professor, under the bus at the first mention that they had any kind of a relationship at all.
And that’s why his visit to the Holy Land was devoted virtually 100% to meeting with Israeli officials, taking the standard AIPAC-approved tour (no views of suffering Palestinians, please, and make sure he stays away from disaffected Palestinian second-class citizens of Israel), putting a note in the Western Wall, and paying a solemn visit to Yad Vashim (I’ll bet he didn’t even give nearby Deir Yassin, which is visible from Yad Vashim, a passing glance). I guess we should all be impressed that he managed out of all that time to give the Palestinians a cursory 45 minutes.
And that’s why his Middle East team so far has consisted entirely of avid advocates for Israel and there is not a single solitary Palestinian-American, Arab-American, Muslim-American, or even non-Israel-cheerleader American Middle East scholar to be found anywhere near him (and with militant zionist Rahm Emanuel as gatekeeper it is now less likely than ever that there ever will be).
Oh yeah! He’s got AIPAC right where they want him!
I can’t see Obama doing anything significantly different from Bush and Clinton during his first or second term without significant pressure from below. Of course this report about him liking the Saudi plan suggests otherwise, but like I say, I think we should take it with a pinch of salt.
But recall that, according to polls, most Americans support a two-state settlement want the U.S. to bring bring pressure to bear on both sides to force them to accept one. AIPAC would of course have a fit, but AIPAC is not omnipotent.
No one needs to put pressure on the Arabs to accept anything. The Arabs have for decades not only accepted the two-state solution, they have demanded it. And for decades Israel has worked overtime to obviate it by systematically destroying Palestinian civil (and cultural) infrastructure, denying Palestinians the means of effective self-governance and a sustainable economy, and by creating facts on the ground designed to result in the eventual annexation of all or most of the OPT into Israel.
The Arab League offer of everything Israel has ever said it wanted – full recognition and fully normal diplomatic and economic relations with Israel – has been on the table for eight years. That is no small thing, in fact it is a huge thing. And yet, for eight years Israel has raised its middle finger at the Arabs, refusing to even consider this truly generous offer as a basis on which to begin negotiations.
However, in the last couple of months there have been some signs of movement in some quarters of Israeli power toward finally considering this offer that, miraculously, the Arabs have not retracted in spite of all that Israel has done since it was originally put on the table. My advice to Obama would be to stay the hell out of it. His strength is definitely not in Middle Eastern matters, and the people he has around him so far do not have a happy history in that regard at all. And Joe (let’s us partition Iraq) Biden, for all his much ballyhooed supposed foreign policy expertise, would be like a bull in a china shop in this situation.
The parties may now be closer than they have been in a long time to a potential resolution. The last thing they need is another U.S. intervention.
“No one needs to put pressure on the Arabs to accept anything. The Arabs have for decades not only accepted the two-state solution, they have demanded it.”
I’m aware of that. I was just telling you what the polls say.
Or telling whoever it was I was replying to, that is.
OK, fair enough. I should have read more carefully before I went off on my rant. Thanks for clarifying.
Still, I am glad I took the opportunity to have that rant just in case maybe a couple of people who were not aware of all that might have read it.
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The Times UK is hardly a source where an initiative of CHANGE would be unfolded. Move along, nothing new here and too many pitfalls and (Israeli) booby traps. Obama’s allegiance to APAIC would have to be renounced. Britain’s Tony Blair as special envoy has made no headway whatsoever on Middle East peace and won’t or is unable to visit the occupied territories for life threatening security reasons. It’s Moscow’s Medvedev who has taken the initiative for 2009.
Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Someone should point out that while the nations in the Arab League have agreed to this, Hamas very definitely has not. They continue to hold out for the elimination of the Israeli state, and insist on remaining in a state of war until that goal has been accomplished. It might be useful to push the Israelis, but they’re not the stumbling block here, never have been. Obama needs to focus his pressure on the Palestinians. They’ve long been the only party not willing to make peace and recognize Israel, and, it would appear, are now the only people who won’t agree to this proposal.
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The Saudi plan puts Hamas in a difficult position. Though they offer various modalities of non-belligerence with Israel, such as a 100-year hudna (truce), they are ideologically opposed to recognizing Israel or making a formal peace with it. On the other hand, they are not interested in blocking a Saudi initiative or standing outside of an Arab consensus.
To deal with this conflict, Hamas has adopted a “policy of ambiguity” where they do not block or accept the Saudi plan. Nor did they oppose Mahmoud Abbas for voting in favor of the plan for the Palestinian Authority. They will remain opposed to a formal peace with Israel or recognition of it. But they have already agreed, as part of the unity government arrangement, to allow Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate for peace with Israel and to abide by any agreement ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people.
This points up the difference between a party’s stance and a government’s, a difference which has been sadly clouded in recent months when it comes to the PA. When Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party were in power, they opposed the Oslo Accords. They were not able to scuttle the deal altogether, as Netanyahu had wished. But no one demanded that Netanyahu and Likud accept Oslo, merely that they abide by the decision of the government they were now in control of.
See my comment on Netanyahu below. Furthermore, the Arab League has never been able to make a united stance due to its inherent breakline between Sunni’s and Shias (Saudi Arabia and Iran).
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“the Arab League has never been able to make a united stance due to its inherent breakline between Sunni’s and Shias (Saudi Arabia and Iran).“
Iran is not part of the Arab League and never will be, not because of some imaginary “inherent breakline” between it and any member state, but because Iran is not an Arab country. But I am sure you know that Iran is not an Arab country, so I am not sure why you think it is something between non-member Iran and Saudia that inhibits the Arab League from making a united stance.
There are lots of reasons the Arab League has historically had difficulty making a united stance. An imaginary “inherent breakline” between Sunni member Saudia and Shi`a non-member Iran is not one of them.
I can’t supply a source of link on this, but in 2003, when the President of Iran was a moderate, Iran allegedly made a peace offer to the Israelis, one identical to the 2002 Arab League offer, through the Swiss embassy. It too was apparently rejected by Israel, for reasons others above have intimated: colonialism.
Not exactly: my understanding is that Iran made a secret proposal to the U.S. to end its supports for armed groups in the region, “stop … any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory”, “pressure … these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967” and support the “Saudi initiative, two-states approach” in exchange for ‘an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.’
The Bush administration not only ignored the message – it actively censured the Swiss diplomat who transmitted the proposal.
I have a recollection of something like that, but I don’t recall the specifics.
But what has that to do with the Arab League being unable to form a united front due to some imaginary inherent Sunni Shi`a split between Saudia and Iran?
“while the nations in the Arab League have agreed to this, Hamas very definitely has not. They continue to hold out for the elimination of the Israeli state…“
That is absolutely false. Hamas leadership has, on the contrary, stated more than once its acceptance of the two state solution.
“while the nations in the Arab League have agreed to this, Hamas very definitely has not. They continue to hold out for the elimination of the Israeli state…“
That is absolutely false. Hamas leadership has, on the contrary, stated more than once its acceptance of the two state solution.
“the Israelis, but they’re not the stumbling block here, never have been. Obama needs to focus his pressure on the Palestinians. They’ve long been the only party not willing to make peace and recognize Israel, and, it would appear, are now the only people who won’t agree to this proposal.“
You are exactly 180 degrees off of reality, and definitely need to change your sources if you want even remotely accurate information. I would be happy to provide a reading list for you, if you are interested.
For your information, the Israelis have always been, and remain the primary stumbling block. There are several reasons for that, but reason number one is their desire to achieve the original territorial ambitions of the founding fathers, including – no, especially – Ben Gurion. Another reason is their addiction to the use of violence and oppression against others, and the destruction of other societies as a means of being dominant and strong. They need to feel someone else’s neck under their boot heel in order to feel good about themselves, and therefore are loathe to make peace, which would necessitate giving that up. And there is another idea, popular in Israel, that the society is so militarized and so oriented toward the false idea that it lives under an existential threat that Israelis are afraid that if peace might break out their entire raison d’etre would be obliterated and therefore the ethnocratic Jewish State might implode and cease to exist as such (something that, as long as it is a non-violent process, would be a very good thing in the opinion of many).
And don’t you know that the Palestinians formally recognized Israel and sought to make peace with it decades ago? It was the PLO under the leadership of `Arafat that pushed forward the idea of the two-state solution, and that naively accepted the Oslo agreement, an agreement that resulted in Israel’s frantic acceleration of the colonization project. The Palestinian struggle has for decades had the two state solution as its goal. The sticking point is that the Palestinians think that should mean that they end up with a contiguous, viable, genuinely sovereign and independent state on what was left of their homeland after the 1948 war and ethnic cleansing, and the Israelis have other ideas.
Perhaps the best and quickest understanding of Israel’s agenda in the Occupied Palestinian Territories can be obtained by googling “Jeff Halper” along with “matrix of control”. Jeff, best known for his work rebuilding Palestinian homes demolished by the Israeli government, is an Israeli who has done excellent work, including the best analysis I have ever seen of the agenda behind the pattern of Israeli colonization (aka “settlement”) and other building and land confiscation in the OPT.
Dennis Ross has come out and denied that Obama will back the Saudi plan.
You can bet your life that Dennis Ross doesn’t like it!
Disappointing to even find Dennis Ross, the engineer of the phony “generous offer” of Camp David/Taba, on Obama’s team.
Ross is an AIPAC operative and an undercover Likudnik. If he gets a high level foreign policy position in Obama’s administration, say goodbye to peace for another eight years. At that time, we will likely have a Greater Israel declared with Palestinian bantustans as Jeff Halper (Israel Committee Against House Demolition) predicted.
If you want to feel a real chill down your spine, take a look at Obama’s transition intelligence team. It includes John “Extraordinary rendition rocks!” Brennan, and Jamie Miscik, who was heavily involved in the phony intelligence, including Colin Powell’s outrageous speech before the UN, and Bush’s mention of the fake Niger yellow cake story, that was used to sell the aggression against Iraq.
I tried to tell y’all that Obama was not going to be any gift to foreign policy, didn’t I?
Let’s hope he at least does some good on domestic issues!
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AIPAC’s influence in the US news media leads to curious and generally unnoticed subsidiary alumni reunions. On June 14, 2007, following a Hamas takeover of Palestinian installations in Gaza, Wolf Blitzer invited Dennis Ross into the CNN situation room to give his perspective on the instability. Customarily, Dennis Ross’s new book and WINEP affiliation were mentioned; AIPAC and the pervasive Israel connection were not. Equally unmentioned were Wolf Blitzer’s former career as a reporter and editor of the Near East Report (AIPAC’s newsletter) in the 1970s …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."