Arab nations have expressed outrage over Israeli contentions that their 2002 peace plan, known as the Saudi Arabian plan, requires changes in order to work for both sides, and charge that
The 5-year-old Arab initiative was recently dragged out of mothballs for re-examination in light of the Palestinian Authority failures to make headway on creating peace on its own – neither with Israel nor internally between its own terrorist factions.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said last week that there were elements of the plan that needed to be changed – a comment that evoked the ire of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Arabs Say Saudi Plan is Best Offer --‘Take It or Leave It’
Saudi Arabia has taken a “take it or leave it” stance on the 2002 Arab peace plan authored by Saudi King Abdullah. That view has been backed by other Arab leaders who will meet late this month at the Arab League summit in Riyadh. The 5-year-old peace plan is expected to be a main focus of the discussions.
Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister Saud Al-Faisal said, in response to comments by Israeli officials that some of the language of the proposal was “problematic,” that there was nothing to talk about.
“We have no desire to negotiate over this," he said. "They accept the resolution and then they talk about putting preconditions that should be accepted before negotiations or discussions or even the acceptance of the proposal. This is not a good way to do business."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak joined in the chorus. A spokesman for the Egyptian leader told reporters after a meeting with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa that Israel "cannot pick and choose from the initiative and then jump into establishing normal relations with Arabs.” Mubarak’s spokesman rejected Israel’s insistence that some of the plan’s elements were unacceptable. “The Arab plan requires full withdrawal for full peace,” he said.
Foreign Minister Livni, responding to the attacks in New York, said that Israel had never accepted the plan in toto, and that it was always said to be a matter for negotiations. "To the best of my understanding," she said, "peace initiatives are not yes-or-no affairs or package deals... they must be negotiated."
Professor: Arab Peace Plans Have One Goal - to Destroy Israel
Historian and Middle East expert Prof. Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University told Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine today, "We must understand that the goal of all Arab peace initiatives is the same - the liquidation of the State of Israel. There is no Arab initiative that is not Islamic in essence. As far as the Arabs are concerned, Israel is a reversal of Allah's promise that Islam can and must rule over the entire world, and this reversal must be corrected... The State of Israel is not led by wise leaders who understand this."
Syria too has expressed support for Saudi Arabia’s stance that its 2002 Arab peace plan cannot be amended or changed in any way. “We have the Arab peace plan and we are committed to it as a whole,” said Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Shara. “Talk about amending it is baseless.” Al-Shara bluntly told reporters Tuesday, after his talks Mubarak, “What we want is returning all the occupied land including Jerusalem.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah II also warned Tuesday evening that violence and Islamic extremism is likely to return to the region if Israel does not come to the negotiating table.
Israel-PA Talks Less Than Promising
Talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, which were revived in December 2006, have been less than promising, as expected.
Both the U.S. and Israel have remained firm that the Hamas-led PA government must meet the criteria of the four-member Quartet of nations, comprised of the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and European Union – official recognition of the State of Israel, renunciation of terrorism and fulfillment of agreements signed by previous PA governments.
Hamas has repeatedly refused to comply with those demands, which the international community has set as a precondition for serious negotiations.
The most recent Olmert-Abbas meeting, held in Jerusalem this past Sunday, was “tense” according to sources on both sides of the negotiating table, a description applied to the previous talks refereed personally last month by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. That assessment came less than a day after sources in the Prime Minister’s office reported that the talks were conducted in a “good atmosphere.”
Despite weeks of groundwork by Rice, who met for weeks with Arab leaders and Quartet representatives, there was little accomplished other than Israeli concessions to the Hamas-led PA government. These included relaxation of travel restrictions on PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria, removal of a number of security checkpoints, and the transfer of $100 million in tax monies, collected by Israel on behalf of the PA, to Abbas’s office.
Moreover, Reuters reported Tuesday that Hamas terrorists revealed that a portion of those funds, allegedly earmarked for partial salaries for Abbas's forces and for humanitarian purposes, nonetheless reached the hands of Hamas security personnel.
At their meeting this week, Olmert demanded that Abbas provide an accounting of how the tax funds were spent; Abbas was unable to do so. He did promise to have it “by the end of the week.”