Remember the Arab Peace Initiatives
One of the great blunders of US and Israeli policymakers alike was the decision to simply ignore the 2002 “Arab peace initiative” putting forward a vision for comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a context that would have normalized relations between the US and Israel. It’s completely understandable that Israel didn’t want to accept the exact deal on offer, but it was the serious Arab-side proposal that Israelis had spent the previous two years complaining that Arafat hadn’t had at Camp David. And while Ehud Barak has taken the view that what he put on the table back that is now magically off the table, Saudi Foreign Minister Al-Faisal was at pains Wednesday to say that’s not the case with his government’s initiative:
In 2002, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed a peace plan to end the Arab/Israeli conflict. This plan, named the Arab Peace Initiative, was unanimously adopted by the Arab League at its Summit in Beirut in 2002.
It is a simple and straightforward plan and one that offers justice, security and peace for all parties.
The Arab Peace Initiative calls for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and the just settlement of the refugee situation in exchange for peace and normal relations with all Arab countries.
The initiative provides for a formal end to the conflict. All Arab countries have committed themselves to it, and it has garnered the support of more than 60 countries, including the United States. The initiative is still on the table.
The Arab Peace Initiative has become a major reference point for all attempts to solve the Arab/Israeli conflict and it is time we turn it into a mechanism to end this longstanding conflict.
Enough blood has been shed. It is time to stop the violence and start the peace. There is more than enough blame to go around, but the simple fact remains that innocent people are dying. And this must stop.
I don’t expect the Israeli government to leap to say yes to this, especially since the idea of a “just settlement” of the refugee issue is in need of definition, but they really ought to be leaping at the opportunity to talk about it. As Scott MacLeod argues, it was a big deal when this was first proposed and it remains a big deal today. Meanwhile, Israel is clearly in need of some kind of political horizon that this military campaign is supposed to be aiming to and a conference to discuss the Arab peace initiative—if only to seek greater clarity on what it really means and therefore what the gap between the Arab and the Israeli position really is—could be that horizon.
48 Responses to “Remember the Arab Peace Initiatives”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 9th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
You know, I’ve been reading and thinking some recently about negotiation – tactics, theories, processes, pyschology, etc. And in all the examples, I keep coming back to this very issue. Isreal seems to be defying the textboook theories. And, I mean, it’s not surprising, given how it’s strongest ally is more of a backer of Isreali military policy than a lot of actual Israelis.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Where do you get off, you sick little twist? Sexual? I’m not sexual with them. I’m not abusive with them, how dare you write that in your paper without knowing nothing about me, biting’s not sex, it’s biting! I’m not sick like that. Maybe I should come bite you, would you like that, scotty? I bet you would like that, I am right? You write about me like I’m sick. You’re the sick one, you know that? Is that why you like me, scotty? Is that why? I could come bite you; you tell me how sexual it is. You humiliate me like that? You mortify me like that in front of my father? My father’s father? Listen to me, smack daddy, crack daddy, little baby whack daddy, here’s what’s happening. You ain’t never going to find them anymore. You aint never gonna see them no more. I’m sending you something right now, You take a good look at this guy, because you ain’t ver going to see him no more.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’ve said in a previous post that peace is not currently in Israel’s best interests.
Israel’s best interests are served by enemies whose existence and hypothetical threat justify Israel’s current policies, but who pose no actual serious threat.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Isn’t this basically “everything that Palestinians want short of the elimination of the state of Israel”?
January 9th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
It is not “completely understandable” that Israel doesn’t want to accept the offer. They don’t accept the offer because they want to keep much (or all)of the west bank, all of Jerusalem, and they don’t want to compensate palestinians for the land they stole.
The Israel refusal to negotiate the Arab League initiative shows just what sick, greedy f*cks they are.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Ah Mr. Yglesias, the naive one. A “just solution to he refugee problem” is Arab speak for resettlement of Palestinians in refugee camps in Israel.
Re ron
and they don’t want to compensate palestinians for the land they stole.
Mr. ron means like the Government of the US doesn’t want to compensated native Americans for the land that was stolen from them.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Ronald Reagan barely managed to keep us safe from those Sandinistas. They were merely a 2 day drive from Harlingen, Texas!
January 9th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I can certainly understand the Israelis’ desire to negotiate not with a league of dozens of countries, but with one not-really-a-country plus Syria.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Depends on what the ‘just settlement of the refugees’ is. But if the deal was the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and a pile of cash for the refugees in return for peace with all neighbors, then it’d be tough to argue against it.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
It’s often forgotten that the Bush dynasty was built upon close ties to the Saudis. They are practically members of the family. Poppy was hardly the blank check supporter of Israel that every US politician after, especially George, has been.
Yet go here and look at one of the most astounding images ever of Jr. If this had been a Democrat………….well you can only imagine. Starting with fag jokes and going down hill.
http://www.treehugger.com/bush-abdullah-holding-hands.jpg
It’s astounding the Saudis were so sanguine about the contemptuous rejection that the administration gave to their peace plan. Of course they have many other irons in the fire.
This whole mess is going to put political pressure on them yet again with the crazies.
On a related note. If oil were to stay around $40 or go lower yet for some time they would be in very very serious trouble. Financially and thus politically.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
No Israeli politician can take this offer seriously because that would put them in a fight to the death with 400,000 fanatical settlers. Anything other than aparteid or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians will destroy Israel through internal strife.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I think that the torture execution of SLC would advance the cause of peace in the middle east dramatically.
Well, no it wouldn’t, but it would still make me – and all reasonable people of good will – very, very happy.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Israel is a rogue state that has violated more international law than all members of the UN combined. It defies UN resolutions on a regular basis (today for instance).
Creation of this state was a historical mistake. We will have to learn from this historical mistake and dismantle this apartheid enterprise.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I think that if the choice came down to either normalized relations with all neighbors or having to keep the settlers happy, then the settlers would suddenly discover that they aren’t the most popular kids in school.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
[I]f the deal was the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and a pile of cash for the refugees in return for peace with all neighbors, then it’d be tough to argue against it.
I submit the Israelis aren’t particularly concerned about peace with their neighbors– it’s been a long time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Compared to real armies bent on overrunning Israel, what’s a few poorly-aimed rockets?
Short-sighted not to want peace, but most politicians are short-sighted.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
OK, now what would the Arabs say if they wanted a just solution to the refugee problem?
January 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
A “just solution to he refugee problem” is Arab speak for resettlement of Palestinians in refugee camps in Israel.
Actually, I understand that they are proposing the resettlement of a large number of them in other Arab countries, and some in Israel proper, and others in a new Palestinian state.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Well, did the Saudis merely offer up that plan because the knew that it would gain them political capital without them having to risk anything for it? My guess is that they were operating on the assumption that the Israelis were going to flatly reject their proposal. They got to reap the benefit of approval and praise from the international community at a time when people were beginning to wonder about their viability and legitimacy (15 of 19? Really?) without having to run any real risk of incurring the wraith of the Wahabbi clerical establishment.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I think that if the choice came down to either normalized relations with all neighbors or having to keep the settlers happy, then the settlers would suddenly discover that they aren’t the most popular kids in school.
‘kay bai guyz. Hope you like being Palestinians. Oh, look, here come some representatives of your new police force. Probably to bring you your passports or something.
…That’s odd, they’re running after the truck.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
No Israeli politician can take this offer seriously because that would put them in a fight to the death with 400,000 fanatical settlers.
Well, not all of them fanatics: there are those who were given the option of living in apartments or in subsidized ‘homesteads’ in the West Bank, and took the more lucrative offer. Some of them would happily move to Israel proper if they got bought out, even though saying so earns the enmity of the ideologically-driven ones.
the settlers would suddenly discover that they aren’t the most popular kids in school.
Then the problem becomes one of persuading Israelis to let the Baruch Goldstein Fan Club move in next door, and that’s another one of those long-term things that Israeli politicians seem eager to kick down the road.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
It’s a great idea, but a complete non-starter. Israeli politics is basically a race to determine the world’s toughest Jew. Tough guys(or gals) don’t negotiate, just ask Shrub.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Right, because being unpopular would totally make the settlers back down. I mean, after one of them shot Rabin, they all realized they went too far and became voices of reason.
Look, the problem with the settlers is that, in a lot of ways, they are as culturally alien to Tel Aviv as the Palestinians are. The danger of trying to remove them from the West Bank is not that they would retaliate politically, but that they would introduce into Israel proper a level of religious intolerance and violence that would threaten the Jewish state.
The idea that the IDF will fire on Jews in the West Bank, drive them from homes they believe God commanded them to live in, and then forcibly relocate them inside Israel with the expectation that they will get along fine with Israel’s most secular, cosmopolitan population is absurd.
Politicans the world over tend to choose the easiest path. For Israel’s leaders, some combination of aparteid and ethnic cleansing is both safer and more expedient politically than risking destroying Jewish society in Israel by forcibly removing the settlements.
As for allowing the Arabs to remove the settlements and just washing their hands of the settlers, Israel’s leaders know that that would result in a bloodbath that the IDF could not just ignore.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
That race has already been won by Mordechai Jefferson Carver.
Sadly, I think that anyone nutty enough to refuse to leave a settlement that’s being given over to Palestinestan would be more likely to spend 48 hours watching a non-stop loop of the Masada mini-series, and then break out the M-16.
It would have been nice, in that case, if the Israelis had been willing to call their bluff.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
the ‘right of return’ bit is always held up as one of the things Palestinians won’t get rid of, and could achieve peace if they just would. I call bullshit, there’s not much reason to oppose this. families and people who feel a strong sense of belonging there will go. that won’t be a large number of people. most of earth’s residents would rather move into a manhole under 42nd street than move to Palestine. where does this paranoia come from that Israel is going to be destroyed if various parties who were kicked out of Palestine are allowed to return and settle there, as long as they abide by the rules?
January 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Israel doesn’t need a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries. They’re not the ones shooting rockets at Israel. This is the same pointlessness as negotiating a peace treaty with Abbas. Whatever Abbas, or the Saudis, or whomever else agrees to, Hamas and other dead-enders won’t, and Israel will have made concessions and not gotten peace in return.
Too much ink has been spilled on this already. The smartest thing for the U.S. to do would be to phase out aid to Israel, the Palestinians and the Egypt and Jordan, and vote for the UN to phase out its UNWRA welfare teat for the Palestinians as well. The Palestinians and Israelis will come to their own solution eventually. Or not.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Fred,
You are absolutely right. I’m pretty sure that if the UNWRA aid to Gaza came to a permanent end while Israel continued its blockade, there would definitely be a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. And it would be a final one.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Uh, Fred?
The Arab Peace Plan is a proposal for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Fred joins SLC as an advocate of the physical extermination of Palestinians.
Big surprise.
“I think that the torture execution of SLC would advance the cause of peace in the middle east dramatically.”
No, I never advocate torture. Just shoot SLC in the knees, elbows, groin and stomach and dump him in the nearest sewer to contemplate his errors as he bleeds out. After all, in this recession, the sewer rats are starving. Think of the sewer rats!
January 9th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
We’ll stop giving Israel cash and weapons, and the UN will stop giving the Palestinians food?
January 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
The more apt response is to boycott Israel – as Naomi Klein argued today in the Nation magazine.
Israel would either get the clue or we’ll force it down their throats.
Israel will have to be slapped hard.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Farid,
Seriously, are you a member of Hamas?
I’m serious. Let me get this straight — your buddies shoot 7000 missles into the sovereign territory of a country established by the UN, you say nothing, and when that country — established by the UN — fights back — under self-defense allowed any country on earth — you call for a boycott.
Only a member of Hamas would do so.
can you tell me the secret password?
BA
January 9th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
can you tell me the secret password?
Go to the AIPAC website and ask the administrator. A buck and half per post. It’s great in this economic downturn BA.
Turn your hate to $$$.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Farid,
The secret password is Hashem.
it is definitely not Allah.
Make some money now.
BA
January 9th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
“it is definitely not Allah.”
Lame. Try again you imbecile.
Seriously AIPAC used to hire hate mongers of higher caliber in the past. What happened?
January 9th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
“the sovereign territory of a country established by the UN,”
Which the UN had no legal authority to do, based on the conclusion of its own commission set up to study that very point.
Which means Israel is an illegal state, not to mention a rogue, terrorist state.
The proper solution is for the UN to reverse its decision partitioning Palestine in 1947 and instead return to its original mission of implementing the Palestinian Mandate and the Balfour Declaration.
Which means the entire area becomes a Palestinian state with allowance for a Jewish population and Jewish immigration.
Forcing the Jews and Palestinians to live together in a one state solution is the only workable solution. A two state solution is no solution, because the fanatics in both states will immediately start a war between the two, in which Israel can do what it wants because it is no longer an “occupying power”.
The only solution is for the UN to re-assert control of the region as a UN Protectorate, sidelining BOTH Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli government and setting up a new state in which only NEW faces – nobody from Hamas, Fatah or the Israeli government or Zionist freak organizations – is allowed to stand for election.
Palestinians and Jews don’t actually hate each other when they have an opportunity to deal directly with each other without the intermediaries of politicians and fanatics. Forcing that fait accompli is the only possible solution.
January 10th, 2009 at 1:06 am
“We’ll stop giving Israel cash and weapons, and the UN will stop giving the Palestinians food?”
Let the Palestinians earn their own living after 60 years and they’ll have less time for tiny-dick fantasies of destroying Israel. Most nations get by without a permanent allowance and babysitting from their very own UN agency. The Palestinians can too. The ones in the West seem quite capable.
January 10th, 2009 at 2:18 am
they’ll have less time for tiny-dick fantasies
As you so clearly prove.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
What a great site!Thank you
==
http://webuyuglyhousesnow.info/dss-lettings-advice-for-tenants-finding-a-property/
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
What a great site!Thank you
==
http://webuyuglyhousesnow.info/rent-try-buy-rent-try-buy-helps-first-time-buyers/
March 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
cialis
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 11th, 2009 at 4:52 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 25th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Wow,super site here!
==
http://eczema-treatment.web-elite.com/site.map.php
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:30 am
Incredible site!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:19 am
Incredible site!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:51 am
I bookmarked this site, Thank you for good job! viagra