Why Israel does not engage with the Saudi initiative

[bemildred]

One of the most puzzling aspects of Israeli policy over the last five years is that neither the Sharon nor the Olmert governments have given the Saudi peace initiative any serious consideration. For most of its existence, Israel could only dream of an offer that explicitly includes peace, recognition of Israel's right to exist and normalization of its relationship with the Arab world. Why, then, has Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered nothing but lip service to the Saudi initiative, and why did former prime minister Ariel Sharon never even indicate that he took it seriously at all?

There are good reasons to believe that the Saudi initiative, ratified by the Arab League, stems from solid and tangible interests on the Arab side. The Saudis and other regimes in the area are afraid that the Middle East could disintegrate into chaotic disarray if the tide of sectarianism and the surge of Islamist movements are not hemmed in. They believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most powerful destabilizing factors in the area, and they have good reasons to think that it fuels Islamic extremism. The Arab world has come to a point where it is joining the international legitimizing of Israel provided by the 1947 UN resolution that endorsed the partition plan, because it no longer believes that it is in its interest to reject Israel's existence.

Why, then, does Israel not engage with the Saudi peace initiative? This initiative, like any Arab proposal that will ever come up, demands a "just solution of the refugee problem." The deep-seated fear in Israel is that the Arab insistence on a solution for the Palestinian refugee problem is ultimately a ploy to wipe Israel as a Jewish state off the map, not through military means, but through demographic means, by flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.

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Here, I believe, resides the deepest reason for Israel's reluctance to actively engage with the Saudi initiative. Israeli public discourse and national consciousness have never come to terms with the idea, accepted by historians of all venues today, that Israel actively drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1947/8 and hence has at least partial responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868469.html

[PATRICK]

1. Neither has quite come

to terms with the reality that both have been had by outside powers and that the destiny of both is bleak in the extreme. Each, each one, has still a foot in the present quagmire with the possibility of gaming the extreme action of hitting down the surging Sunni empire. It is in doubt both for the terrible effects of such chaos and the willingness of America to pull that trigger(and those two are related). The Saudis are showing their desperation by putting feet in several scenarios so as to be effected the least by any of them. Israel is showing its desperation by clinging to the US neocons and the hit. They need to step back from more than their past enmities. They need to step back and shake off outside regional interference in toto. Right now Israel has the most to lose from the present status quo, but in time the dwindling oil and top money corruption will bleed the oil states drier than their over populated deserts.
Will the angry dupes and victims then lock hands in cooperation?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. very likely. there is a possibility that they

view the house of saud without rose colored glasses, and understand that it is unstable, ready to collapse internally, and that infighting between princes has never really stopped since the death of the old king. As unified as they appear to some outsiders, they are anything but. AND, there is a good reason not to trust the Sauds on any major issue, no matter how much you pay in bribes.

[sabbat hunter]

3. numbers count

to say that israel drove all 750k palestinians out of their homes is ridiculous. many were indeed driven out, but some also left on their own accord. others left at the behest of the invading arab armies.

also to say the only way to have a peace treaty is to allow all the refugees, plus their descendants back in is ridiculous as well.

their should be some limited compensation for those that were driven from their homes. in return jews who were forced out of arab countries in 1947/48 should be compensated as well by the arab countries.

maybe saudi arabia should also look itself in the mirror on what it does to cause radical islam thru its oppressive regime and support of waabhism.