Barack Obama Embraces Middle East Roadmap of the Israel Policy Forum
by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, The American Thinker, Jan. 21, 2009
Even before his first 100 Days in office began, President-Elect Barack Obama embraced the left-wing Israel Policy Forum’s proposed “First 100 Days” roadmap for Middle East peace. On January 14, 2009, Mr. Obama made his first public substantive statement regarding his Middle East policy.
Announcing that his plan to resolving the violence between Israel and its neighbors will be a “regional approach” which will include engaging both Syria and Iran, Mr. Obama said he intends to act on his peace plan “from Day One” in office.
Fewer than two weeks earlier, the Israel Policy Forum issued a proposal urging the incoming-president to conduct an “activist” Middle East diplomacy during his first 100 days in office, with an immediate and regional approach to the violence in the Middle East. The IPF urged Mr. Obama to specifically and officially engage Syria and Iran in the process.
The IPF’s roadmap names several fronts on which Mr. Obama should immediately move to kick start the stalled “peace process.” The Forum blames the languishing process on what it calls the Bush administration’s failure to vigorously pursue peace because of its “indifference to the worsening conditions in Israel and the territories throughout his term.”
But the Forum did approve of at least one action taken by the Bush administration. The IPF bragged that it successfully urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pressure Israel to hand over control of the Philadelphi Corrider crossing at the time of Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza. OF course, ceding control of that border crossing allowed Hamas to smuggle into Gaza the sophisticated Iranian weaponry that now threatens vast swathes of Israel, and which triggered the recent Hamas-Israel war.
In his first public speech as president, the IPF urged, Mr. Obama should announce he will help achieve a comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbors, and follow that up by laying out his vision for an overall peace between Arabs and Israelis in a speech within the next two months. Mr. Obama went one better and announced his goal even before he took office. The specifics of the new administration’s plan will, presumably, follow shortly.
The blueprint for the IPF’s suggested Middle East policy is the Saudi Initiative, chosen because of its unique goal to achieve an Arab region-wide peace agreement with Israel. The Arab League has endorsed the Saudi Initiative. That plan includes virtually all of the conditions required by the Arab Palestinians which Israel has repeatedly rejected, such as Israel’s retreat to the 1967 armistice lines, inviting back Arabs who left Israel when it was reestablished as a state along with their millions of descendants, and ceding East Jerusalem to the Arab Palestinians for their capital. That plan has no provision relating to the more than 800,000 Jews who were driven from Arab countries in 1948. (Continue Reading this Article)
this link may suggest the Obama approach
http://sandbox.blog-city.com/the_return_of_george_mitchell.htm
Comment by davidstill — January 21, 2009 @ 9:52 am
A lot more on the foolery of George Mitchell and the Middle East over at Israel Matzav:
Obama’s first order of business: Turning Israel into Northern Ireland.
Comment by Shy Guy — January 21, 2009 @ 9:57 am
Don’t be too quick to assume so…. Last week just before the cease-fire the Obama team was presented with a two-state proposal that could end up making allot of sense to many Jews. This proposal is wrote about on the Israel for Obama blog and basically talks about turning the entire West Bank back over into Israeli control (including Jerusalem) and establishing a Palestinians along the coast in a “Philistine State” based upon the old Philistine and Israelite borders.
Comment by yeshiyah — January 21, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
That is not acceptable to Israel. Even Israel’s center-left government has not endorsed the Saudi Peace Plan. Its a Trojan Horse designed to facilitate Israel’s destruction. And Israel is not prepared to commit national suicide.
Comment by NormanF — January 21, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
yeshiyah
That ancient map depicts a state for the Palestinians not considerably different in location or scope from what I and others have been proposing. The problem is that the “Palestinians” are decidedly not the descendants of the Philistines (actually a Greek seafaring people). The Pals only cynically expropriate that identity to wield as a hatchet when insisting that they are the original inhabitants of the land — just as they occasionally assert the identity of the Canaanites in order to lay claim to the land.
The Palestinian Arabs don’t want to be allocated a portion of the Mandate; they want all of it — absent the Jews. You can’t draw a border around that.
Comment by Charles Martel — January 21, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
p.s. A word of advice: if you wish to get anywhere with your proposal, jettison the “Final Solution” rhetoric.
Comment by Charles Martel — January 21, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
You again! Why don’t you take your buddies and their 15 wives ea. back to Chicago or Liberia or why don’t you go live in the heart of Philistine country which happens to be Gaza and from there rant and rave your cultist Black supremacist hog wash there. There, Arabs will love you and accept you as brothers.
Comment by yamit82 — January 21, 2009 @ 2:39 pm