Israel's Turn To Push Peace Plan

This plan has just as much chance for success as the widely touted Saudi plan that is little more than a rehash of earlier plans that stalled in their early stages.

The problem with every single peace plan proposal is simple. One side, the Palestinians, refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and seeks its destruction. That side is currently represented by Hamas and Fatah, neither of which is in any hurry to modify their foundation documents that call for Israel's destruction and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the ruins of the Jewish state in Israel.

The United States and Egypt have proposed that Israel agree to quickly start talks with a committee of Arab states on how to move the peace process forward, diplomats involved in the matter said on Sunday.

While generally welcoming the peace initiative endorsed by Arab leaders at a summit last week in Saudi Arabia, Israel has called several key components problematic and has been noncommital about how to proceed.

In weekend talks with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and other officials, Washington and Cairo proposed that Israel agree to take part "as soon as possible" in a meeting with a working group approved by the Arab summit that could begin negotiating a possible agreement.

"Arab League countries would talk formally and publicly as a collective with Israel," one diplomat said, calling the effort unprecedented in its potential scope. Talks in the past have generally been on a bilateral basis, the diplomat said.

U.S. and Egyptian diplomats were not immediately available to comment.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday called on Israel to take constructive steps in response to a new Arab peace initiative.

"I call on the Israeli government to take constructive steps to answer the peace initiative put forward by Arab countries," Abbas said at a news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

At the summit, Arab leaders revived a 5-year-old peace plan that offers Israel normal ties with all Arab countries in return for withdrawal from land seized in the 1967 Six-Day War, creation of a Palestinian state and a "just solution" for Palestinians displaced in 1948 with Israel's creation.

The Arab leaders have nothing to lose by rehashing old proposals because they know that all the risks are on the Israelis. If Israeli leaders recognize that the threat to their existence is existential and pervasive regardless of what the Arabs promise, they'll know that the Saudi plan and any other plan that comes to mind is a nonstarter.

The Arab countries must recognize Israel before discussing any further changes to the border, not the other way around. Israel should not be forced to change its borders to suit those nations and entities that have been seeking its destruction since 1947.

A just solution for those Palestinians displaced in the various conflicts is simple. Reparations and for the Arab countries where they took refuge to once and for all accept them as full citizens of their respective countries and to actually provide services to them instead of using them as a pressure relief valve for all that ails the decrepit Arab societies. The time for these nations to use Palestinians as pawns and cannon fodder is over. These nations have to take responsibility for what they've done and the Saudi plan does nothing to address this at all.

Israel can assist in providing reparations, though I believe that it will once again fall to the US to provide the lubricant on which a peace deal will happen (see 1979 Camp David where Egypt was paid $2 billion a year to make peace with Israel).

Of course, pushing the onus on those who sponsor terrorism and invoke Israel as a bogeyman is not going to sit well with those nations since they'd actually incur risks and take chances that their radicalized populations might not like. Yet, if they truly want peace [not peace on their terms where Israel is shattered and broken], then such risks are necessary preconditions to a real peace in the region.