Muslims hope to redefine Israelis as "Arab Jews"

It is outrageous to the extreme the extent with which the entire world refuses to accept the right of the Jewish people to live freely in their own land. Via DebkaFile:

In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to the US and UK, again touted the 2002 Saudi peace initiative requiring full Israeli withdrawal from “occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese land” in return for “full normalization of relations.” But Turki added a refinement: If Israel signed a comprehensive peace, “one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity.” He went on to say: "We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis."

DEBKAfile’s political sources note that this influential Saudi, a former intelligence chief and brother of foreign minister Saudi al Faisal, is keeping up the relentless Arab assault on the Zionist ideal of a sovereign Jewish state in its ancestral homeland.

Furthering his vision of an Arabized Israel, the Saudi prince holds out the promise of: "Exchange visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place."

The interview took place at a conference in Kronberg on the Middle East and Europe staged by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank.

Saudi Arabia Backs Out of Arab Peace Initiative

From Saudi Arabia Backs Out of Arab Peace Initiative:

Saudi Arabia has dropped its support for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Arab world over fears of al-Qaeda attacks, an Israeli official said Saturday. "We estimate the Saudis got cold feet over suspicions of Iran and fears of terror attacks sponsored by Iran and al-Qaeda," the official said. The official added that Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman raised the issue of Saudi Arabia with President Bush during a visit to Washington last week. When Bush announced plans to hold a conference in his speech about the Middle East last week, Saudi Arabia failed to announce whether it would attend the regional meeting. The official added that Saudi Arabia feared that isolating Hamas would push it into Iran's arms and exacerbate Tehran's financial support to radical Palestinian groups. Saudi Arabia's stance set alarms ringing in Amman and prompted the Jordanian monarch to seek an emergency meeting with President Bush.

"The Saudi Plan Is Dead": Senior Saudi Officials Admit to Israel that the Initiative Is No Longer Relevant

From "The Saudi Plan Is Dead": Senior Saudi Officials Admit to Israel that the Initiative Is No Longer Relevant (Hebrew):

Israel's hope to reach an understanding on a political settlement together with the countries of the Arab League has run aground. Senior political officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan announced in closed meetings with senior Israelis that the "Saudi Initiative," which Prime Minister Olmert sees as a basis for an agreement, is presently dead, and that as long as the chaos continues within the Palestinian Authority, there is no point in pursuing this avenue. These clarifications were received by senior Israeli political and defense officials. An internal document from the Foreign Ministry of July 2 says that Saudi Arabia has significantly changed its policy toward Israel and the PA. "Saudi reluctance to express clear support for Abbas and his new government reflects Saudi opposition to Abbas' policy to isolate Hamas," the document says. It further notes that the Saudis are very disappointed by the rapid failure of the Mecca Agreement brokered between Hamas and Fatah earlier this year. The document states that Israel should stop using the term "the Saudi Initiative."

Forgotten Legal Rights

From Forgotten Legal Rights:

After most armed conflicts, the international community has sought to re-establish the status quo ante - the previous situation - as part of a political settlement. However, many aspects of the prewar status quo in 1967 were untenable, if not illegal. Jordan and Egypt previously occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of an invasion by the Arab states in 1948 that the UN Secretary-General at the time, Trygve Lie, called an act of "aggression."

In the Six-Day War nearly 20 years later, Israel entered these territories in what was plainly a war of self-defense. Before Israeli forces moved in Jerusalem, Jordanian artillery fired nearly 6,000 artillery shells on the Israeli parts of the city.

Stephen Schwebel, who later became the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, wrote in 1970: "When the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

UN Security Council Resolution 242, that would become the cornerstone of every Arab-Israel peace agreement for decades thereafter, did not call on Israel to withdraw from all the territories it captured in the Six-Day War. Resolution 242 called for establishing "secure" boundaries, with the understanding that the pre-war lines were not secure.

The "Saudi Peace Initiative," if implemented, would strip Israel of defensible borders, push it back to the vulnerable 1967 lines, and redivide the heart of Jerusalem.

Today, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have replaced the Arab states as claimants to the territories that Israel captured and that have been disputed since 1967. Who would suggest placing the holy sites of Jerusalem under Hamas, whose ideological cousins are attacking churches and mosques across the Middle East?

Moreover, it is transparent today that if Israel were to withdraw from its security positions along the Jordan Valley barrier, al-Qaeda affiliates that are today penetrating Lebanon, Gaza, and Jordan would seize the opportunity and unleash a wave of jihadi volunteers to escalate attacks against Israel.

The writer, the former ambassador of Israel to the United Nations, is the author of The Fight for Jerusalem (2007). He is the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Olmert: No Palestinian "Right of Return"

Yeah, I had to read this more than once also. From Olmert: No Palestinian "Right of Return":

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Jerusalem Post that Israel would not accept the return to Israel of any Palestinian refugees. It is "out of the question," he said. "I'll never accept a solution that is based on their return to Israel, any number." Olmert also said Israel would not recognize a "right of return." "I will not agree to accept any kind of Israel responsibility for the refugees," he said.

The initiative adopted Thursday by the Arab League was the same one passed in Beirut in March 2002, commonly known as the Arab Peace Initiative. It is not, however, identical with the so-called Saudi initiative from a month earlier that did not mention the refugee issue. "The Saudi initiative looks better in this respect than the Arab initiative," Olmert said.

Click here and here to read more about the Saudi initiative.

No one is that dumb: 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative as adopted by Beirut Arab Summit [right of return]

First it was the Germans who dictated to us, and now for more than 60 years its the Arabs. This ugly document keeps resurfacing lately. Who are the Arabs to dictate to Jews who we are, where we should live, what our borders are, what offends us, and where we belong? Arabs overestimate their importance. Israel does not need to prove anything to the Arab world. Arab Palestinians not only have no right to Israel, but only live there because Israeli Jewish leaders lack both courage and piety. There is no law on earth that requires the Jewish people to accept the revision of their history nor their own demise merely because Arabs say we should. Arabs deceive the world and pretend that if Israel went back to pre 1967 borders there would be peace. But what happened in 1967 that caused the borders to change? Did Israel just decide they wanted more land or was Israel attacked, for the seventh time, by warmongering Arabs?

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: unlike the political Arabian Nation, the Zionist movement to Palestine/the Land of Israel represents a return, not an invasion. It is the Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist and not Israeli policies that are the cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is not citizenship that the Palestinians want, nor do they want their own nation; instead they esteem a reactionary vision that would erase the "Nakba," the "Catastrophe," of Israel's creation by eliminating the Jewish state. I have solidified my belief that the only way for peace is that one side must go. A two-nation solution is mere mythology.

Besides, who decides what land is "Palestinian land", the international community? If so, they have tried before. The Arabs were offered land and refused their offer in 1948 and attacked Israel in a pre-meditated war of barbaric aggression. Arabs chose war. Arabs suffer the consequences. Why should any people who have attacked a legitimate and sovereign nation, instead of negotiating, be deserving of the victor's consideration at all? There would be no issue today, if Arabs had been willing to share the land.

Tell me the truth, folks, if the combined Arab states had won that war in 1948, would they have benevolently pulled back so Jews could build a state? No one is that dumb.

The Saudi Initiative

received by email from David Bedein
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Bringing back Arab refugees to their homes from 1948

There is an illusion, that the Saudi Initiative is based on the Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 lines. The following article, written one week after the Saudi Initiative was spawned, clarifies that the Saudi Initiative is based on flooding Israel with 4 million arab refugess and their descendents.

In this article published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Professor Itamar Rabinovich – president of Tel-Aviv University, former Israeli ambassador to the United States (1993-96), chief Israeli negotiator with Syria during the premiership of Yitzhak Rabin, a prominent figure of the Israeli peace camp, and renown expert on the history of the Middle East – explains the advantages - and drawbacks - of the Saudi initiative.