Posted on 04/06/2013 8:48:28 AM PDT by haffast
JERUSALEM - The Obama administration is exploring whether a long-abandoned initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia 11 years ago could become the basis for a regional peace agreement between Israel and its neighbors, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
With U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry due to arrive in the region over the weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been conferring with other Arab leaders on the viability of the plan, which calls for a normalization of relations between Israel and all the Arab states in exchange for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed to McClatchy Newspapers that President Barack Obama raised the possibility of using the Arab Peace Initiative, as the plan was known, as a framework for an agreement when he was in the region last month.
"It was raised directly by Obama during his visit and during his closed-door discussion with the Palestinian leadership," said a senior Palestinian official directly involved in the talks. "It was made clear to the Palestinian leadership that this would be the new direction of U.S. diplomacy in the region."
The official said that White House officials laid the groundwork for the renewal of the Arab peace initiative two weeks before Obama's visit to Israel and the West Bank when they spoke with Palestinian negotiators in Washington.
"They were told then that this would be the focus and that it had great potential," said the Palestinian official, who asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the talks. He said Obama, Kerry, Abbas and Palestinian negotiators Mohammed Shtayeh and Saeb Erekat discussed the topic for several hours during the president's visit to Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters.
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(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
All we are saaaaying....
Is give peace a chance...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM
"Peace and Security" = Israeli natural gas and oil started flowing.
proposed by Saudi Arabia
No thanks.
This kerry subhuman is sooooo 60’s...loser.
And, that plan has worked, How?
I wish Kerry would take a quiet time for the rest of his life!
Problems were exacerbated when the US gave Arab land to Israel at the expense of the Arabs already there. Mind you, they were squabbling among themselves but that was okay. But Jews wanted the homeland that God (Biblically) gave to them. The Arabs had also been there for eons, but that's another story.
What is so odd now is that in Israel the Arabs (mostly Muslim, but not all as I had a Palestinian Arab Catholic as a tour guide in a Steve Ray tour) do all the sh**t work that the Jews don't want to do: cleaning, farming -- planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, etc. The Israelis treat them well because they are, as most people, are, decent folks who appreciate having the where-with-all of having cheap labor.
Sidenote: Also on that tour we got a peek at the Jewish Israeli employment agency. There were three windows for Jews. They were labeled: B.S., M.S. PhD. Lol.
It was an enlightening tour.
Do you know Steve Ray? He was a rabid evangelical Baptist minister and he and his wife, Janet, KNEW that Catholics were all going to hell and he and his wife wanted to save them. So, they learned all about the Catholic Church by reading the early books of the Church.
One night, Steve said, he and his wife had broken down in tears as they realized, with HORROR, that they WERE Catholics. The rest is history.
Steve, with his Baptist past, was a SUPER-WHIZ with the Bible and we got ear-fulls of good stuff from him on the Bible. It gave me a new appreciation of both old and new.
I would recommend a Holy Land tour with the Ray family!
11 Years ago...shortly after 9-11. I believe Saddam was paying the Palestinians for their belly bombers.
Picking a Muslim path to peace is like asking a Fox to guard the Fenhouse.
You can tell who's payroll Kerry is on.
The Arab Piece Plan - Taking a piece of land, here and there, until Israel no longer exists.
Yes. IIRC, this was an AWFUL plan.
Kerry said, “Nothing bad happened in Viet Nam after we left.”
wow what audacity! .. to actually re-propose yet another failed effort at destroying Israel by taking away its land and ability to defend itself
brilliant, boys, brilliant!!!!!!
(/s)
Where the heck has Kerry been regarding N. Korea????
...proposed by Saudi Arabia 11 years ago...The Saudis emphasized the advantages of accepting this proposal by mass-murdering thousands of Americans.
It's a shame the the US is so dependent on Saudi oil. The Saudis haven't even BEGUN to exploit their "Empty Quarter," which, the geologists say has even more "awl."
The Americans who work for Saudi ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) make a ton of money. There is no federal income tax on the first $100,000.00 made by American citizens. Also, if one lives over there then those folks are NOT state residents any more and henceforth have no state income tax. SO, it's all profit.
My engineer husband took home $5000.00/month in 1980. We had more money than God. If he worked overtime, as he did the first year, the take-home pay was $6800.00 per month. That was a TON of money back then.
We bought a new house (tract home) in 1982 with a big down and paid it off in nine years. Amazing.
For folks who want to make a bundle, there IS work that can fulfill many dreams. We also traveled like you can't believe: Syria, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, India, China, southeast Asia, all the places I KNEW I'd never see if I were back home.
We stayed there five years and then decided that HOME and FAMILY were FAR MORE important that anything else, even money.
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