Palestine Think Tank

Barack Obama is studying the recipe for peace

Michele Giorgio (il manifesto, 18/11/08)

JERUSALEM – The US is denying claims made by the “Sunday Times”. Two days ago the British weekly reported that President-elect Barack Obama, during the talks which took place last July with the Palestinian leader Abu Mazen, had openly expressed himself in favour of the Saudi Arabia-sponsored peace plan that was approved by the Arab League in 2002 in the Beirut summit and ratified again last year in Riyadh. Dennis Ross, Obama’s adviser for Middle-East policies, has immediately intervened, denying what the British weekly reported.

“I was at that meeting too (with Abu Mazen) and Obama didn’t say such things, this story is false”, Ross brusquely stated. Instead, according to the Sunday Times, Obama expressed very explicitly his support in favour of the Arab plan to the extent of stating that “the Israelis would be crazy if they turned down this proposal. It would give them peace with the Islamic world from Indonesia to Morocco.”

The Israeli leaders have never taken into account the Arab proposal though it offers huge advantages to the Jewish state. In exchange for the Israeli withdrawal from the borders precedent to the 1967 war and therefore to the occupation of various Arab territories—the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights—the initiative contemplates the entire Arab world’s recognition of Israel and a lasting and definitive peace.

Above all the Arab plan makes no reference to the issue of the Palestinian refugees’ return to their land (as called for by the UN Resolution 194) but it only limits itself to urging a “fair” solution. Actually it proclaims the “end” of the refugees’ right of return by welcoming the Israeli position that has been recently confirmed by Foreign Minister and leader of Kadima party Tzipi Livni. “If there is still a problem concerning with 1948 refugees, well then this is not Israel’s problem”, she said during her recent visit to the US.

This extraordinary opportunity hasn’t been snapped up by Israel, despite the fact that out-going Premier Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres have in the past few days turned their attention unexpectedly to the Arab plan. “The Arab plan won’t be ever accepted, in its present form, by any Israeli minister, either right-wing or left-wing ones,” says analyst Efraim Imbar, director of Tel Aviv’s “Besa” Centre for Strategic Studies, to il Manifesto, “Israel will never agree to withdraw as far as pre-1967 borders and will reject any possibility of dividing Jerusalem”. Imbar considers the Arab plan “merely the possible starting point of a future negotiation, as much as other proposals might be.”

The Israeli analyst’s doubts over the Sunday Times’ leaks are understandable if one bears in mind that the incoming US administration isn’t likely to start entering the Middle East field agreeing with an Arab proposal that would leave the Israeli leaders cold. Ms. Livni, who might win the political elections of next 10 February and become the new Premier, clearly said in her last visit to the US that Israel doesn’t need Obama to interfere “dramatically” in the Palestinian-Israeli talks. “The situation is calm, there are peace negotiations underway,” she told the assembled Jewish communities’ leaders in New York.

The other possible winner of the forthcoming elections, the right front’s leader Benyamin Netanyahu, is more rigid than Livni, since he doesn’t consider returning territories to the Palestinians but only “economic improvements”. As far as Abu Mazen and his staff are concerned, they didn’t comment on the Sunday Times’ article, yet the Arab plan, approved by the PLO in 2002 and ratified the past year in Riyadh, is given consideration by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

Judging by the rigid stance of Israel, not few believe that the leaks from the British weekly have been circulated by someone who has maybe wanted to deliver a message to those collaborators of the new American President who are considered too “liberal” over Middle Eastern issues: former Republican Brent Scowcroft, former US ambassador in Tel Aviv Daniel Kurtzer, former president of Iraq Study Group Lee Hamilton and former advisor for national security Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the Sunday Times’ article, they are all reported as being strong supporters of the Arab plan.

Source:

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/18-Novembre-2008/art41.html

Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, both members of Tlaxcala www.tlaxcala.es, network of translators for linguistic diversity.