To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #641, 4/14/13
This Week Not Quite In The Inq: The Arab ‘Peace’ Initiative of 2002
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Two McClatchy articles This Week In The Inq
*** Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, 4/7/13, A4, McClatchy, “Obama, Kerry Ponder Old ‘Saudi Peace Plan’”, and
*** Inq, Tuesday, 4/9/13, A7, McClatchy, “Kerry: Palestinians, Israelis Must Make Peace”
reported the U.S. government’s revival, as a framework for Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace negotiations this year, of the old “Arab Peace Initiative,” a Saudi plan which Arabs had presented take-it-or-leave-it to Israel back in 2002.
The bottom-line here is that the 2002 “Arab Peace Initiative” is not so much an Arab-proposed compromise peace agreement with Israel on the Arab-Israeli conflict’s key issues – borders, refugees and Jerusalem – as an Arab call for almost total Israeli capitulation on those crucial issues. So, from a pro-Israel media watch perspective this week, the issue raised by these McClatchy articles is how fully and fairly did these articles characterize what’s called a “peace” initiative by the Arab side of the conflict.
A threshold question, bearing on whether it’s worth expending time and energy evaluating the fullness and fairness of the media’s portrayal of the Arab initiative, is whether the U.S. is really serious about reviving that 2002 Arab plan as a framework for 2013 Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace negotiations. From quotations of Israeli as well as Palestinian Arab officials in this week’s Inq’s articles, it seems that the U.S. is very serious about this indeed.
How This Week’s Inq Portrayed the Saudi Plan and U.S. Seriousness In Pursuing It
There are two intertwined media watch issues here, the seriousness of the United States about resurrecting the 2002 Saudi plan, and the fairness and fullness of these news articles’ portrayal of what that plan says, the former being determinative of how concerned we must be about the latter’s deficiencies.
Tuesday’s Inq article put these two issues this way:
Both Israeli and Palestinian officials told McClatchy Newspapers last week that Kerry was interested in dusting off a long-ignored Arab initiative – called the Arab Peace Initiative – that would grant Israel full normalization with Arab states across the region in exchange for a final status solution and an independent Palestinian state. [emphasis added throughout]
Sunday’s article, which the Inq headlined “Obama, Kerry Ponder Old ‘Saudi Peace Plan,’” was accompanied by a photo which the Inq-captioned: “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (right) in Jordan. The plan calls for normal relations between Israel and Arab nations in exchange for a Palestinian state.”
Sunday’s article’s text led with the Obama administration “exploring” whether the Saudi plan “could become the basis for a regional peace agreement.” Succeeding paragraphs showed that “exploring” has proceeded to actual pursuing. Paragraph 3 cited both Israeli and Palestinian officials as confirming that President Obama had “raised the possibility of using the Arab Peace Initiative, as the plan was known, as a framework for an agreement when he was in the region last month.”
Paragraph 4 directly quoted “a senior Palestinian official directly involved in the talks” that the Saudi plan “was raised directly by Obama during his visit and during his closed-door discussions with the Palestinian leadership.” The quoted Palestinian official characterized the plan as calling
for a normalization of relations between Israel and all Arab states in exchange for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
That paragraph further quoted that senior Palestinian Arab official: “It was made clear to the Palestinian leadership that this would be the new direction of U.S. diplomacy in the region.” Paragraph 5 quoted him that “the groundwork for the renewal of the Arab peace initiative” had been laid two weeks before when Palestinian negotiators visited Washington. Paragraph 6 quoted the Palestinian Arab official: “They were told then that this would be the focus and that it had great potential,” and that “Obama, Kerry, Abbas, and Palestinian negotiators” had “discussed the topic for hours during the President’s visit to Ramallah.” All this, part of which came from Israeli as well as Palestinian Arab officials, seems a little inconsistent with the State Department stating, paragraph 9, that Kerry “wasn’t going to be ‘putting down a plan.’”) It seems, however, that the 2002 Saudi plan has been resurrected by the U.S. as a peace negotiations framework.
It’s important, therefore, that the American media fully and fairly inform the American public of this “Arab Peace Initiative’s” actual peace terms.
The Actual Arab Peace Plan versus Its Portrayal This Week In The Inq
Now, let’s compare how the media characterized that 2002 Arab Peace Initiative This Week In The Inq with what that document actually says.
As quoted above, the characterizations of the 2002 Arab peace initiative This Week In The Inq included
*** “[according Israel] full normalization with Arab states across the region in exchange for a final status solution and an independent Palestinian state”
*** “normal relations between Israel and Arab nations in exchange for a Palestinian state.”
*** “normalization of relations between Israel and all Arab states in exchange for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state”
And finally, in last Sunday’s Inq McClatchy’s article’s final paragraph 11:
The Arab Peace Initiative, also referred to as the ‘Saudi peace plan,’ was first proposed in March 2002 at an Arab League meeting. It stipulated that Israel withdraw from areas occupied in the 1967 Middle East War – the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip – and allow the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. In return, Arab nations would pledge to adopt normal relations with Israel and effectively declare the conflict over.
None of these four references to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative [see, e.g., English translation at http://jcpa.org/text/Arab-Peace-Initiative.pdf] informs readers of the scope of the demands it makes upon Israel on the Arab-Israeli conflict’s core issues – borders, refugees and Jerusalem. Thus, readers will not appreciate the magnitude of the Israeli capitulations that are demanded by this plan that the U.S. is seriously contemplating adopting as the Palestinian Arab-Israeli peace process “framework.”
Borders
The Arab Peace Initiative (“API”) calls for “full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967 ….”
As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (“JCPA”) points out in its comments to the translation cited above, this is at odds with U.N.S.C. resolution 242, which intentionally did not say “all.” JCPA adds: “By stipulating that the withdrawal on the Golan must be to the lines of June 4, 1967, the API rejected the international border, which had placed the entire Sea of Galilee in Israeli hands, and effectively placed the Syrians on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s main water source.” And see re Jerusalem, below.
Refugees
None of the four references to the API This Week In The Inq references “refugees.” The API calls for “achievement of a just solution to the Palestinians refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.”
The Arabs (who, btw, rejected 194 at the time,1949, Myths & Facts, 2002 ed., p. 137) now interpret 194 as granting a Palestinian Arab “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel as one of “two states for two peoples.” Given that interpretation, the API’s use of “in accordance with” 194 renders “achievement of a just solution” to the refugee issue impossible.
Jerusalem
The API calls for “the acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
This begs the question of what’s “occupied” versus disputed, and certainly Israel does not regard any part of Jerusalem – Old City, Western Wall, Jewish Quarter, City of David, etc., etc. – or Judea-Samaria as “occupied.” It may compromise some of these areas, but not in a “framework” that begins by calling them “occupied.”
American newspaper readers are entitled to be informed by their newspapers that the 2002 “Arab Peace Initiative” presently being “pondered,” as the Inq put it this week, as a U.S. “framework” for 2013 Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace talks calls for total Israeli withdrawal back to the 9-miles-wide in critical parts old 1949 ceasefire lines (no holier than their replacement 1967 ceasefire lines), kicking the Jews out of the core of Jerusalem and putting the Syrian authorities (whomever they turn out to be) on the Sea of Galilee’s shores, and for achieving a resolution of “the Palestinian refugee problem” in accordance with a non-binding previously-Arab-rejected 1948 UN General Assembly resolution the Arab side now interprets as granting millions of Arabs an Israel-ending Arab “right of return.”
Regards,
Jerry