Has the United States spent 60 years wishing Libya, not Qadaffi, didn't exist? Did the United States try to make Libya disappear? No. Thus the compairison to the Israeli-Arab situation to that of Libya-United is absurd. The problem is that the Saudis can't and won't publicly negotiate for the Palestinians. They could not even make a deal with Fatah and Hamas last more than two weeks.

If israel is going to put Palestinian missiles with reach of major Israeli cities and go through the serious political effort of removing settlers from the West Bank they are going to have to see if Abbas and his Fatah is going to survive in the West Bank.

The bottom line is that anti-Israeli voices of the Left are very cavalier about dead Israelis and anything they support the opposite should be done. It is remakable how the neo-Cons and TPMCafe have obliderated forever the myth of Jewish intellectual supperior.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Here's a funny quote from Daniel Gree above (or below):

"It is remakable how the neo-Cons and TPMCafe have obliderated forever the myth of Jewish intellectual supperior."

Read it again and consider Daniel's well placed worry that Jews are getting stooopid.

A couple of responses.
Daniel G, of course, neither remembers nor cares that Libya shot down a Pan Am plane killing 250 Americans, mostly college kids coming home for Christmas/Chanukah break, among other terrorist attacks that killed American soldiers and civilians. But Daniel is, to use his phrase, "cavalier" about American lives, only keeping track of Israeli casualties. I'm embarrassed for the guy.

As to Daniel's garbled conclusion about Jews becoming dumb. All I can say is res ipsa loquitur, baby.

I think we have had all the baby steps we need. In my opinion, and it's only an opinion, both sides use baby steps to get what they want from the US while avoiding serious concessions. The time for baby steps is over.

Actually, the Israelis are more interested in the Saudi connection than in anything about the Palestinians. They so want an alliance with the
Saudis to help counter the Iran threat that the Saudi bit serves an inducement to come to terms with the Pals. At least, that is my reading.

Hey MJ, I thought you were going to stop posting here on the Middle East. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

I decided to aggravate the usual suspects.

Thanks, Don. It's not folks like you that I'm aiming to aggravate.
But thanks.
MJ

The Israeli pre-condition they imposed on negotiations with the Saudis was INTENDED to kill the Saudi peace offer.

Look, ignore the facts as long as you want, but the fact is that the Saudi peace offer is over 20 years old, and has been consistently rejected by Israel. You think that's just an accident or a case of Israel "missing opportunities"? No, that's a deliberate policy. ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT PEACE - Israel wants land, and any excuse to take more of it (peace would prevent that, see.)

The only thing the Israelis want to see from the Saudi offer is a way to undermine it whilst shifting the blame onto the Saudis themselves.

TIME reported this back in 1981:

Fahd stated that Israel could "live in peace" with its Arab neighbors provided it permitted the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to form an independent state. That condition alone made the proposal unacceptable to the Israeli government, but U.S. and European officials said that they hoped the Fahd initiative might be a first tentative step toward working out some solution to the dangerous impasse in the Middle East.

In an interview with the official Saudi Press Agency, Fahd called for: 1) Israeli withdrawal from all territory that it had occupied since the 1967 war; 2) removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other occupied areas; 3) guarantees of freedom of worship for all religious groups within these areas; 4) recognition of the rights of 2 million Palestinian refugees — from the 1948 war as well as the 1967 war — for repatriation or compensation; 5) U.N. trusteeship over the West Bank and Gaza Strip during a transition period of several months; and 6) establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with the Arab eastern section of Jerusalem as its capital. Such an agreement, Fahd continued, should be guaranteed by the U.N. or by some of its members, presumably meaning the U.S.

More important, the agreement would assure the right of all states in the area to live with each other peacefully.

Since then of course Israel has continued the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians and the theft of Palestinian land.

When will you people get it - Israel doesn't want peace; Israel wants land.

As a closing pre-weekend contribution to interested readers on the issue of what could be an evolving relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia, I'm linking to this analysis in today's Haaretz by David Govrin, who is the director of the Islam department at the diplomatic planning division of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Govrin's thesis is that there is a growing number of Sunnis who are recognizing that Israel could be an ally in response to the increasing popularity of more militant components of the Sunni community and the increased influence of the Iranians both inside and outside of the Shiite community. As reflected in this excerpt from Govrin's analysis, he points out that to the extent Israel is beginning to be seen by some as part of a solution, such is not the case among those in the overall "rank and file" Arab community:

It is noteworthy that, in the context of the spread of Islamic radicalism in the region, the Sunni regimes are seeing Israel more and more as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. Nevertheless, it appears that there is a gap between the Arab rulers who are interested in advancing a regional initiative with Israel, even without formal recognition of it, and public opinion. The Islamic circles and the secular Arab nationalist elements alike are drawing encouragement from the Lebanon War, from what is perceived as the United States' failure in Iraq and from the Iranian policy of challenging the West, and are acting to advance the strategy of "resistance" to Israel.

Thanks for the post MJ, and hopefully you will continue to write about Israel and Palestine, and that the satisfaction you get from aggravating those who aggravate you will not be the only incentive for you to post in this area. I think you are hearing that there are many people who appreaciate the chance for serious dialogue.

A good weekend to all.

Bruce

MJ represents the Guardian that basically represents the Palestinians. There are many reasons for Oslo's downfall, leaving final issue for the final stage is only one of many.

By the way, every negotiation starts with agreement on the simpler issues and ends with the tough nuts. MJ is probably talking about negotiations on Mars.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting the negotiation before the conference itself (Barak and Livni), after all, the Sausis are doing exactly the same by saying "Saudi officials say that the four major 'final status' issues must be on the table.

How come MJ, there suddenly is one law for the goose (Saudis) and one for the gender(Israelis)?
The biggest item MJ totally ignore is does it make sense to make peace with Abbas or may be you should wait for the Palestinian (Hamas and Fatah) to make peace at home and negotiation with a people instead of with a person.
Last and least, the statement 'Never Missing An Opportunity to Miss An Opportunity' was coined by Abba Eben about the Palestinians. Simple decency requires one to say it!!!

Steps for ME peace:

1) Stop sending them arms. Embargo anyone who does. Let their own economies bear the costs of their militancy. Let them choose between butter and guns.

2) Develop energy independence domestically so we're not hostage to their regional insanity. That would also allow us to effectively sanction militant and anti-democratic regimes, without conflict of interest.

3) Get out of Iraq. As long as we're occupying Iraq we're incapable of acting as an honest broker in the region.

At the risk of dragging this thread back on topic;

MJ says the "Palestinians" will be in attendance. Which Palestinians? Abbas/Fatah? Hamas? Islamic Jihad? And if one of these groups is left out, what does that mean for the validity of any agreement reached at the talks?

Also, the fact that Condoleeza Rice is determined to reach an agreement is nice, but everything this adminstration touches turns to sh*t. Why, then, does her involvement constitute an "opportunity" for anyone?

Not to worry--correct spelling is over-rated. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

I'll leave aside all the bad history and blame-Israel-first nonsense in this post and focus on the interesting question here: does it make sense to start a negotiation with the hardest issues or leave them for later after all the easy ones have been solved?

Having some experience with contract negotiations, I can say that it is MUCH more common to take exactly the approach of the Oslo accords: Build trust and momentum by tackling the easiest issues first.  Then focus on the thorniest aspects of the deal when it is clear that only a few things stand in the way of an agreement.  Theoretically, the parties are then highly motivated to reach a deal.  If you take the opposite approach, the negotiations could easily get bogged down as both parties start with maximalist positions and they haven't built the trust necessary to feel comfortable making concessions.

And this is the key point.  The Oslo agreement did succeed to a certain extent in that the neogtiating parties did build up relationships with each other that resulted from frequent contact.  When Ehud Barak made his offers to Arafat at Camp David, he was building on all the work that had gone before. 

To start a negotiation with the hardest issues in an atmosphere of intense suspicion and hatred is simply guaranteed to fail.  MJ assumes that things can just pick up from where they left off seven years ago.  But they can't.  Most of the players are different.  They don't know each other.  There is no trust established.  Furthermore, the level of trauma in both societies as a result of the conflict is too great to overcome under these conditions.  There is simply no way that an Israeli Prime Minister could sell an agreement to the Israeli people that was negotiated in this way.  On the Palestinian side, there is also no way that the people will accept such an agreement.  The negotiators would be certain to be assassin targets.

The bottom line is that it can't work, and it is staggeringly naive to think it could.

Finally, it is worth pondering what are the "big four" issues themselves.  In the formulation of the Saudis and most others, the hardest issues are borders, Jerusalem, settlements and refugees.  But each of these issues revolve around the question of how much Israel should give up.  How much land handed over.  How many settlements removed.  How much compensation and/or repatriation for refugees.  To leftist critics of Israel, this all makes perfect sense since to them it is self-evident that all that stands in the way of peace is Israeli intransigence on these issues.

But back in the real world, it is blindingly obvious that the Palestinians need to give up things too:  Crack down on terrorists.  Stop the arms smuggling.  End the disgusting incitement to violence and anti-Semitism in the Palestinian media. Tackle corruption.  Reform education.  Those are the REALLY hard issues that will have much more bearing on whether there is peace than whether Israel evacuates Jewish settlers from Hebron or whether Israel gives up 92% or 95% of the West Bank.  And yet somehow these aren't "big issues".  Let's be clear: Israel will NEVER make the kind of concessions on the big issues the left wants unless there is also progress on these other issues.  Which is another reason why the success of the "hardest issues first" approach is so unlikely.

Observe Saudis among "leftist critics of Israel".

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016184.php
No word on whether the Standard does investigations of pieces that have run in their pages. Maybe the Standard's Executive Editor Fred Barnes can enlighten us.

How about MJ. ? Is he going to apologize for jumping the guns.
Does he have any sense of decency?
Why Josh doesn’t not ask him to apologize ?

Left wing champion a victimhood hit parade #1.
We are hopeless Palestinians, there in nothing we can do to imrove our live or solve any problem.
With friends like MJ, Palestininians ....

Read history of own People, MJ.
Did your people wait for their
occupiers to solve the problem..

"The sad thing is that it will be no consolation to me when the policies advocated by Davai... lead to the destruction of Israel"

Look MJ, I understand that your are in a fight or your life, saving Israel from helself, saving Israel from destruction.

But still, sound judment, decency, honesty is appropriate in such fight.

Your duty is to appologize to TNR, specially for
"particular pleasure" and for feeling "sweet".

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/21/chickenhawk_bill_kristol_says_antiwar_people_even_bereaved_moms_are_against_the_troops#comment-273947

The other interesting thing in this piece is that Kristol argues pretty persuasively that the New Republic is again publishing fake stories. Of course, Kristol only cares about this because the story in question questions the war. But it is sweet seeing the New Republic caught plagiarizing again.

The Weekly Standard, New Republic and the now forgotten Commentary are the three neocon rags. All of them lie but I get particular pleasure in seeing the magazine that Marty Peretz destroyed brought down again.

"Fortunately, I don't think these extremists have as much sway in Israel as in Long Island."

I don't know about Bar K, but my position is mainstream position of Israeli, American Jews, Americans in general, and even majority of Democrats.

"In the end, Israel will sign a deal with the Palestinians"

Let's hope so. Who is against signing a deal if a deal improves Israel's securiry?

I agree with Kozmik and offer the following:

Did arming Iran and Iraq during the 1980's really serve our goals of peace in the Middle East?

Are the Saudi's really our friends or are they just our blackmailers?

Isn't arming everyone in the Middle East just another MAD deterrence strategy without the restraint of total destruction?

If it wasn't for the oil wouldn't we be treating the violence in the Middle East the same as we now deal with the violence in Africa i.e., ignore it?

The west became mired in the Middle East because of oil. Shouldn't our best foreign policy actually be a domestic policy i.e., reduce oil dependence?

MJ: Good news this morning (I think). Haaretz is reporting that a meeting on Monday between Olmert and Abbas will deal with final status issues, in advance of the summit in November. At least this is what Saudi (Al-Watan) and Palestinian (Al-Ayyam) newspapers are reporting (along with the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, London); I'm not sure if it's been confirmed yet by Israel.

From the Haaretz article:

Olmert and Abbas to meet in Jericho on Monday
By Avi Issacharof, Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Government sources confirmed on Saturday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will meet on Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho.

The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported that the meeting, which it said was slated for Sunday, would tackle the framework for a future Palestinian state.

The meeting will address final status issues in an attempt to make progress ahead of a Mideast peace conference announced last month by U.S. President George W. Bush , Top PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

The article goes on to say that Abbas will call for early elections of both the Palestinian presidency and the Legislative Council once an agreement is reached.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said Rice was "serious" about starting talks on key questions.

"No one can talk about 'fundamental' issues without solving the problems of borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees, because these are the fundamental issues for the establishment of a Palestinian state," Erekat said

Using an agreement as a rallying cry for new elections is meant to increase the chances of Abbas' Fatah movement to beat rival Hamas in a vote. Hamas swept that last PA elections in 2006, but was dismissed by Abbas from the government after it took over the Gaza Strip in bloody fighting in June.

This seems to be an incredible breakthrough, if true, and may be in part a result of Olmerts desire to normalize relations with the Saudis, who have been calling for final status talks. It would be a major success for Olmert to bring the Saudis to the November summit. But it worries me that there doesn't seem to be any Israeli confirmation of this as yet. Getting Palestinian hopes up, only to have them crashed is one of the things that has lead to the rise of Hamas. I pray the extremists on both sides won't be able to scuttle peace plans this time.

"Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals..." ~~ Iraq Study Group

"In the long run, though, I do not believe the two-state solution will work."
You might be correct.
It's possible that the best solution is a federation including West Bank, Gaza an Jordan.

No, Abdul's bringing up some forgotten history is well worthwhile. The Arabs have basically accepted the two-state solution since the aftermath of the 1973 war, and even before that, the Arab states (Egypt and Jordan, with quiet Syrian approval) had offered peace treaties to Israel in 1971 and afterward, but were rather insultingly rebuffed by Israel, which came under strong American criticism for their rejection of the Jarring initiative and later diplomatic efforts. (see Rabin's memoirs). (Or Finkelstein's Image and Reality, or Saadia Touval's Peace Brokers for the Jarring Initiative.) The recent Abdullah initiative goes beyond the earlier offers, but the real change in the Arab position came much earlier.

The 1967 Israeli cabinet decision is worth knowing about too, and is quite laudable, but its meaning is hard to assess. Contrary to your statement, it said nothing about the West Bank and was only directed at Egypt and Syria. Most historians think it was never actually made to the Arabs. The offer was communicated to the US, which was never told that it was to communicate it to the Arabs; Egyptian and Syrian archives have been searched fruitlessly by their former Foreign Ministers who had never heard of it at the time. See Shlaim's Iron Wall.

Israel is being asked to give up tangible things it has no right to, and in return would get peace. The same kind of criticisms were made in Israel of the Camp David treaties, by idiots like Golda Meir and Ariel Sharon. Begin was intelligent enough to not listen to them, which is why his premiership is still generally well-regarded by Israelis. When was the last time Israel and Egypt fought a war, with thousands of Israeli casualties? The ones who don't care rationally about dead Israelis are the ones who are too ignorant and stupid to accept a generous and rational peace offer like the Arab peace initiative.

A very telling comment. 

Apparently land-for-peace is no longer the operative formula among the loony left, it it ever was.  It's basically land.  And if peace doen't materialize?  Well, tought shit.

Sorry, but that dog won't hunt.  Back in the real world, land-for-peace doesn't mean land-for-maybe peace.  It doesn't mean land-for-hope for the best.  It doesn't mean land-for-I don't know.  It means land-for-peace.  And unless the Palestinians take concrete, verifiable steps towards working for a permanent end to the conflict, they can't expect the land.

Simple, really.

Israel would have to accept the existence of a sovereign state of Palestine in what is the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and would have to either repatriate or compensate the Palestinian refugees.

This is the same as the "two-state solution" that you claim to support and yet seek to undermine.

Israel is in fact already legally obligated to do this and more anyway. But we all know that Israel is a racist murderous expansionists illegal millenialist entity anyway, so I for one am not holding my breath that they'll accept a prefectly reasonable and fair peace offer - just as they haven't accepted all the other Arab peace offers since 1967 - and in the meantime, they'll keep expanding their settlements and yet whine about how they just want peace...

Greater Israel, here we come...no matter how many Jewish or Palestinians civilians have to die for it.

Bar: You say that because the Saudis are "guardians of the Muslim holy places," that for them to recognize the Jews' right to a state would be impossible, but I can't help but wonder if it's the opposite concern that motivates your comments. For decades, Israel has been doing everything imaginable to increase the Jewish population of Jerusalem, at the expense of it's Palestinian inhabitants, and this process is continuing as we speak. Are you willing to give up the idea of a "unified Jerusalem," free of Muslim inhabitants? Would you see an agreement that returns the Muslim portion of the city to the Palestinians as a "betrayal?"

I think it's certainly conceivable that the Saudis are increasingly coming to recognize the value of peace with Israel in light of the rise of Iran and Islamic extremism in the region. Barak's pre-conditions for talks just create yet another stumbling block on the way to an agreement. Why insert preconditions, as the ultimate goal of the talks would clearly achieve those conditions anyway? Israel can always simply not agree to any proposed solution that doesn't meet the criteria, although it's unimaginable that a final agreement wouldn't involve the recognition that Barak seeks. Putting the cart before the horse hasn't worked so far; why try it again? Unless of course, a peace agreement isn't really desired by Israel.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." ~~ Abraham Maslow

How much? Are you seriously trying to haggle for a bargain to buy off the right of innocent men, women and children that have suffered a historic injustice at the genocidal hands of Zionists? Man Davai, you need a serious moral check up.

I didn't say it, the Saudis did.

How much would you expect if someone came off a boat from Brooklyn, shot and raped your family, and forced you into a refugee camp for 60 years? Start from there. But don't worry, I'm sure one way or another, AIPAC will get the US taxpayer to cover the costs- as usual.

But I am sure things won't get that far since Isreal will find a way to deflect the peace offer so it can go on expanding "settlements" as it has always done. And sure enough, you'll be here to blame the palestinians.

I have looked at the columns in Ha'aretz the last couple of days and they are all very skeptical about this "peace conference" and the "new momentum". I specifically mention Ha'aretz because it is the voice of the Leftist Establishment in Israel that is now largely post-Zionist, so if the consensus there is that there isn't going to be peace, it isn't because they "want to increase Jewish settlements" like some of the posters hear mistakenly think. Meron Benveniste (the furthest Left of all their regular columnists) says they are repeating the whole Oslo fiasco (i.e. "building confidence", saving the "tough decisions for last") not because they believe it will lead to a peace agreement, but because Abbas's Palestinian regime wants American money to try to stablize its rule and to knock out HAMAS. Various terminological changes in their platform, i.e replacing one synonym that means "struggle against Zionism" with another which is then presented to Western reporters as indicating some sort of meaningful "moderation" is typical of what Arafat did in the 1990's when he was weak.

The general consensus among the columnists is that since the unilateral withdrawal scheme of Sharon/Olmert failed, the plan now is to get the Palestinians to "build a civil society and governmental infrastructure" (just like what the Americans are attempting in Iraq) which is Tony Blair's main objective now. Once this is supposedly accomplished, then the Palestinians can be given a state.

Zvi Bar'el pointed out that the Saudis are playing their usual double-game of trying to get American support (in this case, the big load of goodies in the form of shiny new fighter jets and the like). He says they have no intention of making peace and he stated the same thing I did, that if they were ever attacked by the Iranians, they would never use the weapons, instead they would call in American soldiers to fight for them, so the whole purpose of the the arms sale is unclear. On the one hand they want American support, on the other hand they preach hatred of the US, Jews, Christians, Israel and support the anti-American forces in Iraq. Thus, he says anyone who thinks such a regime can be a force for making peace with Israel is deluding himself.

yeah its all my fault that Israel has been ignoring the Saudi peace offer from 1981.

There is a lot of good stuff in the media today....here is an excerpt from the Jerusalem Post of an article by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein reporting on a poll of attitudes towards Israel in Africa which shows that it is a myth that "the whole world opposes Israel and its policies"
--------------------------------------

Reason, for the time being, prevails out of Africa

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMNON RUBINSTEIN, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 6, 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What country in the world boasts the highest rate of support for Israel? The United States? Wrong. The highest rate of support for Israel can be found in the Ivory Coast, where 61 percent support Israel and only 16 percent support the Palestinians.

The same ratio is true where support for Hamas is concerned: Only 2% have a favorable opinion of Hamas and 37% have a "very negative" opinion of this organization.

This surprising finding is part of a global opinion survey conducted this year by the PEW Research Center, which included tens of thousands of participants in 47 countries. And Ivory Coast is not the only African country to demonstrate a high rate of support for Israel: In Ethiopia, which is half Muslim, the rate is 37%, as opposed to 25% who support the Palestinians. Similar rates can be found in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Even the Muslim country of Mali has a perceptible support rate for Israel - 13% - higher than in Spain and Italy.

None of the African countries polled, with the exception of Mali, demonstrated opposition to Israel of the kind we find in Britain, where 29% support the Palestinians, as opposed to only 16% percent who support Israel.

The opposition to Hamas in the African countries polled is even higher. The exception to this rule is Egypt, in which the opposition to Israel is all-embracing and support for Hamas especially high.

SUPPORT FOR Israel in African countries is exceptionally striking in view of the fact that the global anti-Israel campaign consistently presents Israel as an "apartheid," colonialist and racist country. Despite this, and in marked contrast to Britain, where this propaganda has taken on fascist proportions, African countries support Israel more than they do the Palestinians.

What is the reason for this?

In absence of a scientific study, we can only guess that support for Israel likely has a number of sources: the memory of the Arab slave trade (to this day, the Arabic word for "black African" is the same as the word for "slave"); the threat of Muslim expansion; the genocide perpetrated by Sudanese Arabs in Darfur; the asylum Saudi Arabia provided to murderer Idi Amin, and the absorption of Ethiopian Jews in Israel (which may explain the results of the survey in Ethiopia).

------------------------------------------

Here is the link:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1186066396338&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter