Posted on 01/20/2008 6:05:24 AM PST by Alouette
Prince Turki al-Faisal, adviser to King Abdullah, says if Israel accepts Arab League plan and signs comprehensive peace, 'one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity'
Reuters Published: 01.20.08, 15:15 / Israel News
A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories.
In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain and adviser to King Abdullah, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.
Asked what message he wanted to send to the Israeli public, he said: "The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative, has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world."
The 22-nation Arab League revived at a Riyadh summit last year a Saudi peace plan first adopted in 2002 offering Israel full normalisation of relations in return for full withdrawal from occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese land.
Israel shunned the offer then, at the height of a violent Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But it has expressed more interest since the United States launched a new drive for Israeli-Palestinian peace at Annapolis, Maryland, last November, aiming for an agreement this year.
Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan and signed a comprehensive peace, "one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity".
"One can imagine not just economic, political and diplomatic relations between Arabs and Israelis but also issues of education, scientific research, combating mutual threats to the inhabitants of this vast geographic area," he said.
'His remarks should encourage Israelis and Arabs' His comments, on the sidelines of a conference on the Middle East and Europe staged by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank, were some of the most far-reaching addressed to Israelis by a senior figure from Saudi Arabia.
The desert kingdom, home to Islam's holiest shrines, has no official relations with the Jewish state, although both are key allies of the United States in the region.
"Exchange visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place," Prince Turki said.
"We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis," he said, noting that many Arabs historically saw the Israeli state as a European entity imposed on Arab land after World War Two.
Prince Turki, brother of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, holds no official position now but heads the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.
He said Israel could expect some benefits on the way to signing a treaty and making a full withdrawal, noting that after the 1993 Oslo interim accords with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, regional cooperation had begun and the Jewish state had achieved representation in several Arab states.
Those Israeli advances were reversed after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000.
Israel was wary of the Arab League plan partly because it would entail handing back the Syrian Golan Heights captured in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as re-dividing Jerusalem, of which Israel annexed the captured Arab eastern part in 1967.
But an Israeli participant at the conference, Yossi Alpher, co-editor of the Bitter Lemons Israeli-Palestinian Web site and a former senior intelligence official, welcomed the comments.
"I was delighted to hear Prince Turki's description of the comprehensive nature of normalisation as he envisages it within the framework of the Arab peace initiative," Alpher said.
"His remarks should encourage us Israelis and Arabs to deepen and broaden the discussion of ways to reach a comprehensive peace, implement the Arab peace initiative and reach the kind of cooperation that his highness described."
Alpher said he hoped that once there was a comprehensive peace, Israel's Arab neighbours would accept Israelis "as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland" and not as "Arab Jews" or "European Jews".
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Israel's answer to Prince Al Turki should be: "bite me."Meh... there's more to the Saudi plan than meets the eye. The Saudis and the rest of the arab US clients(Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE etc...) are desperate to get out from under Iran's shadow. Normalized relations with Israel go a long way towards tilting the balance of power back in their favor. Syria is also showing signs of being amenable to a Libya style turn around, assuming they can get security guarantees.
It's not like the Democrat accusations would've been any different anyway :-)
Cheers!
>>Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.<<
Excellent observation...
Israel would provide the water, agriculture, science and education.
The arabs would allow Israelis to live another day.
Now let's break down the last part: "as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland"
Or more succinctly: "as Jews living in our homeland"
IMHO this is a ploy to counter perceived Persian hegemony which scares the mohammed out of the Saudi's et al.
Once the Persian is no longer considered a threat they'll again focus their attention on the Jew living in the Moslem homeland.
The Saudis have been promoting this old tired ("Israel gives up everything and we will think about acknowledging their right to exist") since 2001.
BTW what "wars" have they been fighting that they are "tired of"? Saudis never fought a war, not even to defend their fake "kingdom" which was given to them by the British out of the Turkish empire.
What a fantastic deal! And if this goes really well, as I'm sure it would, there is that other piece of land for full withdrawal. You know, that piece in the middle of the middle east.
At least it’s a sign that maybe they too are getting tired of war.LOL... you wish. It's more a matter of them realizing that it's far better to live in the status quo with the Israelis than let Iran continue to infiltrate and undermine them from within.
I think it’s a sign that they see the terrorist threat that they started has gotten out of hand and is now as big a threat to them as us. In Iraq we have shown them that we are going to be on the winning side and that’s where they want to be. If the damn democrats don’t pull the rug out from under us.
I think it’s telling that the Syrians have quit yapping about the Golan Heights after the IAF first shut down their entire air defense network and then blasted their North Korean built reactor back in September.
What a fantastic deal! And if this goes really well, as I'm sure it would, there is that other piece of land for full withdrawal. You know, that piece in the middle of the middle eastHysteria aside, right now the Saudis want a strong Israel. Remember how the Saudis were rah-rahing Israel against Hizbollah? The Saudis care far more about Iran.
I think it’s telling that the Syrians have quit yapping about the Golan Heights after the IAF first shut down their entire air defense network and then blasted their North Korean built reactor back in September.From what I read that wasn't a reactor. The Israelis thought it was a plutonium processing plant, which would be far worse. You're right though, it definitely shut them up.
true. how long are they gonna fight? they’re gonna run out of suicide bombers at some point. And the sane ones are seeing no results of Decades of conflict.
I hope and pray that you are right. This Gordian knot is at the center of our issues w/ Islam and the Arabs. A saudi prince laying out a pathway to normalization carries far more weight than any "peace plan" cooked up in Washington, at least w/ the Arabs.
Only the Arabs can call off the dogs on intafada.
"MHO this is a ploy to counter perceived Persian hegemony which scares the mohammed out of the Saudi's et al"
Bingo! You are the first one to get it. The Saudis are driving all the recent events in the middle east. And if they have to make deal with the Israelis to save the Kingdom from the Khomeiniacs they will do it. Imagine that, it will be the Israelis who have the Saudis' back in this conflict. It is a very strange world we live in. Well, maybe not so strange when you think about it.
Mark
I thinks the Israelis need a little more assurance than “...one can imagine...”
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