Israel pushing to improve Saudi peace initiative ahead of Riyadh summit
The Israelis are putting pressure on the Arab League to change the Saudi Peace Plan before a summit meeting at the end of this month.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni presented Israel's demands on Thursday, saying that Israel's thought it was of great importance that the plan should remove all references to refugees.
"A new summit is in the offing, and they ought to know which parts [of the plan] are acceptable to Israel and what seems to us like an absolute red line," she explained in an interview with Channel 10 television.She did not, as far as I can tell, specify in what way the conflict is not just "a border dispute". Israel has long sought to make this war with the Palestinians about anything other than land, when, of course, that is exactly what the dispute is all about. Land.
Livni said that the original draft presented by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia "was, in my view, positive." That draft called for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders in exchange for peace and normalization with the entire Arab world.
"Admittedly, the initiative spoke of the 1967 lines, but I only wish we were in a situation in which the conflict was just a border dispute," she added.
And how much of the land seized in 1967 is Israel prepared to hand back and do the Palestinians find the offer acceptable. It is ludicrous to pretend that this dispute is about anything else.
Her main objection to the refugee reference in the plan is as follows:
The new article inserted at the 2002 Beirut summit, however, demanded a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194," and that resolution calls for allowing the refugees to return to Israel. It therefore contradicts Israel's vision of a two-state solution, which, explained Livni, calls for a Jewish national homeland alongside a Palestinian national homeland, with the latter serving as the solution for the Palestinian refugees.Leaving aside the rather bizarre notion that Israel is allowed to negotiate which UN resolutions she thinks she ought to abide by (and dismiss those she finds unacceptable) Livni is incorrect when she talks of UN resolution 194.
The common understanding of that resolution is that Israel must "repatriate or compensate" the refugees. That is, either allow them to return home or give them some form of compensation for their loss of property. Livni is choosing to present this resolution as some backdoor way to ensure the death of Israel as a Jewish state by allowing a huge Palestinian influx to effect the demographic mix. That is simply not what the resolution says.
It does, however, imply that people who have lost their homes and lived as refugees feel that a wrong has been done to them and that this wrong should be compensated for financially.
That's not an unreasonable finding. Indeed, it is Livni's reading of that resolution that is unreasonable.
In fact, even if the resolution did say what Livni thought it said, it is surely not for one side to state what another side may wish to negotiate for before negotiations are allowed to take place? This is the Bush style of negotiation as witnessed regarding Iran and North Korea. "Give us everything we wish for before any negotiations can take place or there's no point in negotiating."
Livni is set to tour Europe next week outlining what she calls "the Israeli peace initiative" for a two-state solution. If that's her reading of resolution 194, I can't wait to hear what she's come up with in her "Israeli peace initiative". In fact, that phrase rings so oddly to my ears that it's almost an oxymoron.
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