great article! Lays out the situation with admirable cogency.

I hardly know what to say. Other than...here's one more thing Bush/Cheney, AIPAC, and cowardly Democrats have to answer for.

When nuclear war engulfs the Middle East...or just endless civil war, if we're *lucky,*... where will these cowards be?

Man. Do we need a Lincoln right about now.

It may take 50 years for Israel to lose the demographic war but much can happen in that time, or so the Israelis hope.

Perhaps the Palestinians will kill each other off in a civil war. Or civil society will simply collapse.

Israel is like a robber who steals a hundred dollars from you and then claims to be generous by offering to give back 75. And he still holds the gun.

The Palestinians would never survive without the aid of the Arab states and would be forced to accept whatever they were told to accept. Israel cannot survive without the US but neither Bush nor the next president will ever force Israel to do anything it doesn't want to do.

Israel will never lose but it won't ever win either.

the United States is arming Fatah

Arming Middle Eastern groups we don't like in hopes they will defeat groups we like even less ALWAYS ends up with really unpleasant blowback. Arming Saddam as a counter weight to Iran was a diaster. Arming the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan created Al Queda. Arming Fatah is another disaster in the making.

It is never, was never going to happen in the first place.

Seriously. A few thousand years of hate and you think Bush is gonna solve it? The motherfucker can't even handle eating a pretzel without choking.

The Middle East is a clusterfuck and all we've done since around 1900 is make it worse every time we try to help. I say the sooner war, the quicker peace.

This hand of peace was offered to Israel by the Arab states with the caution: accept it, or prepare for war. And in return for 'recognition' by and 'normal relations' with Arab states, and those states' pledge to honor former agreements with Israel that they consider 'legitimate', Israel gets shrunken borders, millions of Arab refugees, and a Syria, a Hezbollah, and a Hamas-Fatah still under Iranian control. Not even the armed camps on Israel's borders are dismantled, and Haniyeh and Mashaal have already renewed their vows to 'resist' the 'occupation.' The Arabs can hardly stand the idea of peace with Israel, which they would prefer to destroy, and that's why they make the offer with threats. The only reason they offer peace at all is fear of Iran. So, they tell Israel, sacrifice what you need to sacrifice to pacify Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria--that is, halt the spread of Iranian influence-- and then we recognize you.

I'm surprised Olmert even bothered to reply to such an offer.

You got the only sensable approach to the topic.

And right below your post is a guy advocating throwing the Jews out of Israel... again. Man. How many times have you kicked Jews out before, and now you want to do it again.... history repeats, and the loving liberals of Salon love to... kick out the Jews.

Hasn't anyone told you it's not really cool to post sock puppets?

Nice try, though.

While there are good points in the article, it really does fall badly short of true mideast analysis when it completely ignores the complicated issues that exist on the Arab side of the initiative.

And before I even get to those, it might be wise to point out that whatever the shortcomings of the current Olmert government (and there are many) it was elected on a platform of withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, Americans really don't need to lecture Israelis on the need to "bite the bullet". If Hamas would kindly oblige and stop firing rockets from areas which were removed of an Israeli presense, the pullout might be a little quicker.

As for the Arab side, perhaps rather than take it from me, take it from the Lebanese in 2002:

www.meib.org/articles/0203_s1.htm

Syria and the Saudi Peace Initiative

by Gary C. Gambill

"Assad relentlessly worked to sabotage the proposal through the most intensive flurry of Syrian diplomatic activity in recent memory. Syrian officials fanned out across the Middle East in advance of the March 27-28 Arab League summit in Beirut, pressing other Arab states to water down the promise of normalization, add explicit conditions to it that virtually no Israelis are willing to contemplate and simultaneously declare their support for the suicide bombings taking place in the Jewish state."

"However, Syria's pre-summit efforts to convince Arab governments to officially reject the concept of normalization generated mixed results. Not surprisingly, Iraq and Libya backed Syria's position, but the Jordanians were insistent that the Arab League officially endorse the term, arguing that this "magic phrase" would moderate Israeli public opinion - a view shared by the Saudis. The Egyptians, whose diplomatic clout derives largely from the absence of a broader Arab-Israeli settlement, felt upstaged by the Saudi peace initiative and were more ambivalent."

"The Arab League summit transformed Abdullah's simple declaration of principles into a more convoluted resolution that is less likely to achieve a breakthrough with Israel. Although Syrian efforts to replace the term "full normalization" with "complete peace" were unsuccessful, they were able to reduce it to the watered-down phrase "normal relations" (alaqat tab'iyya), which carries a very different connotation in Arabic - meaning the establishment of relations that are not unusual, rather than a process of improving political, economic, and cultural ties."

While the Saudi Initiative (and yes, it is and was a fantastic move in the right direction) may appear to be put forward by a united Arab front, this is not really the case. Many in the Arab world see a huge Shiite/Sunni split with the Initiative symtomatic of Saudi moves to essentially side with Israel against what they view as a common enemy.

More from another Lebanese commentator, with link:

beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/2007/03/syria-and-arab-peace-initiative.html

So it was clear that there was Arab fear of a Syrian attempt to once again do what it did in 2002. In fact, it was leaked before the summit that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia sent a message to Bashar that they will not tolerate him using the summit as a podium to deliver one of his typically long and rambling ideological screeds to lecture the Arab leaders.

Why was Moallem worried about amendments? Because there was chatter that there might be "updates" to the initiative that would make it more appealing. The Syrians wanted none of that. In fact, the Syrians told the regime's man in al-Hayat, Ibrahim Hamidi, that Syria rejected any "normalizing movement" or visits to Israel (aimed at marketing the initiative) by any Arab state that hasn't signed a peace with Israel. They insisted that any communication with Israel be done exclusively through Jordan, Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas.

So once again, the Syrians sought to kill normalization and to introduce maximalist amendments on the refugees, both designed to ensure an Israeli rejection. Once again, their success is mixed.

No additional clauses on the refugees were introduced in the final statement. The Syrians had to make do with flooding the media (for example the Syrian-Iranian tool Azmi Bishara was all over the Arabic satellites bashing the initiative) and with rhetorical bluster at the summit, through their allies and proxies. So while Assad was apparently instructed to put a cork in it (indeed, the multiple leaks said that his meeting with King Abdullah was "heated" and "confrontational"), he delegated obstructionist and rhetorical duties to his puppet, Emile Lahoud, who indeed made bombastic statements on the refugees issue. Also, the hard-line interpretation of the refugees issue was handed out by Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh (who stressed to the press that he was pleased the right of return was asserted, even when the text made no reference to it).

Neither Hamas nor Syria has any interest in seeing this initiative succeed, of course. Furthermore, Syria wants to ensure that it gives absolutely nothing, but gain the dividends anyway. This was, after all, the Syrian modus operandi throughout the "peace talks" in the 90's. Moreover, Syria wants to make sure that the Palestinian (and Saudi) track is as unattractive as possible for Israel, in the hope that Israel might decide that it would be easier to try Assad instead, thereby throwing him the life rope he so desperately needs and has been trying to snatch in order to lock himself in a process, break his isolation, and work to re-establish control over Lebanon and terminate the Hariri tribunal. After all, Assad is not after the Golan. He's after Lebanon. The Golan is a bonus at best.

What Saudi Arabia is interested in is to cut off the road for Iran on the Palestinian issue, by taking control of that file and by shutting down Hezbollah in Lebanon so as not to repeat this past summer's misadventure. In other words, Saudi Arabia (and Egypt and Jordan) cannot afford to allow Iran (and its sidekick Syria, and their proxies) to control the decision of war with Israel. The move is to neutralize that option. And since Israel shares that same interest, the thinking is that perhaps they might go along (and indeed, the various, if uncomfortable, murmurs in Israel indicate that the Israelis realize this. Which is probably why Egypt's Abul Gheit made sure to state that the Arabs don't view Israel's rejection as final.)

This is not to say that the Arab initiative will succeed. It's unlikely to, and it probably will end up being theater, as Martin Kramer noted. (Hamas is already shooting it down and upping the maximalist rhetoric. So there's little to talk about. And there won't be talks with Syria either, which shares and encourages Hamas's maximalism and rejectionism.) So in the end, Syria et al. will do their best to use it, but also make sure it fails, just like they did in 2002.

Now Salon, show me that you can do more than cherry pick from the NYTimes and Haaretz and actually analyse the situation as it stands. Show me that you can come up with a better and more insightful look into the Arab World and Middle East and how it functions.