Arabs Endorse, Israelis Reject Mideast Peace Plan

Reuters ^

[RCW2001]

Arabs Endorse, Israelis Reject Mideast Peace Plan
Last Updated: March 28, 2002 10:24 AM ET
By Samia Nakhoul BEIRUT (Reuters) - Arab leaders unanimously agreed on a far-reaching Saudi proposal for peace with Israel on Thursday and closed ranks against any U.S.-led attack on Iraq. But Israel promptly rejected the Arab peace plan as a "non-starter" that implied destruction of the Jewish state. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians were bracing for fierce Israeli reprisals after Wednesday's suicide bombing that killed 20 people in the coastal city of Netanya. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from Beirut to try to head off a new wave of violence. "I urge the leadership of both peoples to stay the course and continue the quest for peace," he said in a statement. "The essential first step is an immediate cease-fire." A Beirut Declaration issued at the end of an often stormy two-day summit in the Lebanese capital endorsed a Saudi plan offering Israel peace and normal ties if it returns all occupied Arab land and agrees to live alongside a Palestinian state. It said Israel must also agree to a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem in line with a 1948 U.N. resolution that calls for them to be repatriated or compensated. In return the Arab countries would "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended and enter into a peace agreement with Israel (and) establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace," the document said. REGIONAL TENSIONS Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah proposed the plan in a bid to halt 18 months of worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence and calm regional tensions that have soared since the September 11 attacks on the United States by Arab suicide hijackers. He piloted it through the summit despite Syrian reservations and in the absence of several key Arab leaders. Israel kept Arafat bottled up in the West Bank, saying he had failed to halt attacks by militants. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan decided at the last minute to stay at home for reasons yet to be fully explained. The Arab peace terms break little new ground, but do stress the Arab world's readiness to accept Israel in the region -- something which the conservative Islamic theocracy of Saudi Arabia had previously found particularly distasteful. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said his country could not accept the return of Palestinian refugees to the homeland they lost when Israel was created in 1948. "The Saudi initiative as it was presented by the summit of the Arab League represents a non-starter," he told Reuters. "We cannot accept on the one hand to have negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state, an independent Palestinian state, and on the other hand have all the Palestinians come into Israel," Nachshon said. "This means the destruction of the state of Israel and obviously we cannot agree." Arafat gave his blessing to the Saudi plan in a televised speech originally intended for the summit. Lebanon's refusal to air his address by video link prompted a furious Palestinian walkout on Wednesday, but delegates later rejoined the summit. Apart from setting terms for ending more than half a century of conflict with Israel, Arab leaders soothed disputes festering between Iraq and Kuwait since the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. Iraq, keen to secure Arab support against a declared U.S. intention to topple President Saddam Hussein, came near to promising not to repeat its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. OLD ENEMIES EMBRACE Arab leaders, who clapped when the heads of the Saudi and Iraqi delegations embraced before them, called for the definitive lifting of U.N. sanctions imposed for the Iraqi invasion, as well as for U.N. resolutions to be respected. "We stress our total rejection of any attack on Iraq," they said in the Beirut Declaration read at the close of the summit. Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah told Reuters he had even shaken hands with Iraqi presidential envoy Izzat Ibrahim during a closed summit session. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are close U.S. allies and their support would be important if the United States decided to extend its war on terror to Iraq, lumped by President Bush into an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea. The Beirut Declaration "welcomed Iraq's confirmation to respect the independence, sovereignty and security of the state of Kuwait and guarantee its safety and unity to avoid anything that might cause a repetition of what happened in 1990." U.S.-led coalition forces drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, ending a seven-month occupation.

[happygrl]

Nowhere did I argue that the monarchies of the Old Teatament are better, where did you get that ? My point is that you are making much of the democracy in Israel; where is the democracy in any of the member states of the League of Arab nations?

[TigersEye]

Well well, I will hear all the angry Israeli supporters saying, we cannot reward terrorism, bla, bla, bla….

Bla, bla, bla? So we should reward terrorism?

Philosophy is not your strong suit. Try burger flipping.

[happygrl]

No, I don't agree. Democracy is not a suicide pact. I agree with Robert Kaplan that in order to survive, Warrior Politics : Why Leadership Requires a Pagan Ethos should be applied where necessary.

The Palestinians have no desire to be in the State of Israel. Don't you know that ?

[Tolik]

Your argument in this and following posts has valid points. But one thing makes it irrelevant IMHO.

You and I can argue, trying to reason each other, we can find a compromise or we can agree to disagree - peacefully. No such thing with Palestinians. Sorry, another way of thinking. All our western highbrow attempts for peace are signs of weakness for them. The whole Palestinian refugee problem was created from the beginning to be a knife in the back of Israel. We can sympathize with their sorry life, but they were purposely left as pawns to sacrifice in Arab/Muslim war against infidels/Jews. For them, all people coming up with different compromise solutions are no more than “useful idiots” [not intended by me to be a personal attack against you :-)].

We can hardly comprehend lobotomy-robotizing of Palestinian kids into suicide bombers. They were intentionally programmed that way. I am horrified for them. That is a crime against humanity as it is. I can not relate at all to a mother blessing a son for a suicide mission, no more than I can’t fathom any compassion to Andrea Yates.  

We project on them OUR desire for peace. THEY don’t want peace. They want victory. Even if some of us don’t see them as our enemy, they do. It makes no difference what we say. Our argument is irrelevant. There is no difference in their eyes between me, you or anybody here on this forum with 180° opposite views. All Israeli, Americans are their enemies. They do call, prey, and plan for our distraction. We need the complete military victory and “de-nazification” before we can hope for them to understand a concept of peace the way we understand it.

[TigersEye]

As American (lower case d) democrats, let's agree right now that the sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza should be decided by simple plebiscite. Agreed? Agreed? Agreed?

Never! Never! Never! Given the chance to vote the only thing the 'palestinians' would vote for is the destruction of Isreal. This is abundantly clear from their history, their actions and their words, propaganda fed to the west aside.

And please don't lay that democracy crap on the U.S. either. The U.S. is a Republic. A representative democratic Republic, not a democracy.

[happygrl]

I wouldn't want to inflict that on them at all. I think that the Hounds of Hell should be let loose so they can settle up. We haven't had any problems with the Germans or the Japanese in the last, oh, 56 years, have we ?

Didn' you see that I endorsed Publius 6961's Plan ?

[justshutupandtakeit]

No I did not miss the point and after reading your response you still haven't made one.

There is NOTHING Israel can do or say that will stop the Murderous Minions of Mad Mo. Giving back land won't stop them. An independent Palestinean state won't stop them. Cease fires won't stop them. These lunatics will not stop as long as there is a Jew east of the Mediterrean Sea. Therefore, the only thing that can be done is kill as many of them as is necessary to put a stop to the suicide bombers. Just because they want to die does not mean it is not good to kill them.

Your earlier post showed either a lack of awareness (trying to blame the latest wave of terror on Sharon and arguing that Barak would do better) or a willingness to lie.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Don't try and claim that Israel's demand for a King was approved by God. It wasn't he warned them but they would not listen.

[Southern Federalist]

That Passover slaughter's really got Fenian's juices flowing, hasn't it? He's all over the board spitting and spewing like Vesuvius.

[veronica]

Bump.

[TigersEye]

Didn' you see that I endorsed Publius 6961's Plan ?

Amen to that. All these 'palestinians' came from those Arab states either to escape brutalization from their Arab bretheren or leech off of Isreals success. Why can't those Arab states do something to help them? Two simple reasons. One; they don't want them. Two; they do want to use them as their frontline in their goal to destroy Isreal. Which shows that the major Arab states have no compassion for the suffering of 'their own' and lack the courage and honor to fight their own fights. That's about as despicable as it gets.

Making deals with thugs and savages is ridiculous. By definition they will agree to anything that gives them an advantage and break every agreement when it suits them. If compassion for the 'palestinians' were the only issue then how is it compassionate to reward a thug or a criminal for his behavior? If you reward evil you encourage it. Is it compassionate to encourage someone to be evil for your own temporary gains?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Yeah, old B.F. just loves those terrorists. They are so reasonable and just like us.

Of course, he has no clue about that of which he speaks and it becomes more clear with each statement.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Virtually all agree that the claim to occupation comes because the Murderous Morons of Mad Mo tried to destroy Israel by military attacks in 1967. Thus, the new lands Israel gained are its by virtue of conquest of enemies which attacked her.

[Tolik]

As I have written before on other threads, if you assume the very worst about your enemy and discount any chance of reasoning with them you will get precisely that. If the Palestinians as a people are as subhuman as you insist, then they will continue fighting you until you have exterminated them. All of them

I don’t think they are genetically any different from me or you. I don’t call them subhuman. I call inhumane: their conditioning in hate and making suicide bombers out of them; and sacrificing them (by their Arab brothers) to war against Israel.

they will continue fighting you until you have exterminated them    

Germans and Japanese don’t fight us now, don’t they? What’s different? De-nazification and Marshall plan. Let’s do it again.

if you assume the very worst about your enemy and discount any chance of reasoning with them you will get precisely that

Israel has shown willingness to negotiate on many levels. Israel has full spectrum of political parties from far right to far left, including Arabs elected to Knesset and communists. Israeli media is very critical (from the left, mostly) of their government. From different points of view they are trying to reason with Palestinians. What is the answer? More bloodshed. Where is the best of this enemy?

Israel does not have the depravity or practical ability to carry out the type of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that would be necessary to eliminate 3 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. They can't do it.

I don’t advocate murder or elimination. I advocate military victory and destroying of Palestinian Authority. Ethnic cleansing is dirty word, but population exchange/transfer did happen in the 20 century many times and was called a success. I agree that this is a contradiction: not to annex the West Bank for fear of a demographic bomb and not to continue exert power over it as is. I would prefer to streamline a border with Jordan, remove some settlements, give Jordan back a negotiated part of the West Bank with all Palestinians, and help them economically to deal with it. Gaza can go back to Egypt. Jerusalem remains Israeli.  

Do you genuinely want peace for your friends in Israel? Or would "victory" satisfy you?

Yes on both counts. Victory first, peace next. Otherwise, it does not matter if I or Israeli want peace, Palestinians don’t want it. They demonstrated it loud and clear to anybody who wants to see it.