Obama To Pursue "Ambitious" Peace Plan In Israel Involving Divided Jeruselum [Nice Deb]

TimesOnline reports:

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.

The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

This, of course, completely contradicts the "poor phrasing" that he used in front of AIPAC earlier this year:

It should be noted that 77% of American Jews voted for Obama.

A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory. They included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brzezinski will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London.

Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined in the appeal. He said last week that the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was “a way to psychologically change the mood of the region”.

Tzipi Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favors the plan is running against Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud. She's the front-runner in the elections due in February.

Netanyahu is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967:

"Giving Hamas half of Jerusalem will make the rest of Jerusalem unlivable," Netanyahu said. "Giving up Judea and Samaria will transfer the areas controlling the coastal plain into the hands of Hamas, leading to Kassams…on Tel Aviv."

According to the government's plans, Israel will pull back to the 67' borders. Obviously, this is the plan and any attempts to disguise it are futile," he said. "We are facing an exact replica of the government's plan at the Camp David summit in 2000."

"This is no way to make peace," the former prime minister lamented.

Obama reportedly told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, when he visited Ramallah, last July: “The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.”

H/T Gateway Pundit:

posted by xgenghisx at 11:58 PM

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