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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5162537.ece November
16, 2008 Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal Uzi
Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Sarah Baxter 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. On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect
said
privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that
could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a
senior Obama adviser. The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when
President
Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove,
commended the
initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York. Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of
Saudi
Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: “I wish that your voice
will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people.” 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”. Advisers believe the diplomatic climate favours a deal as
Arab
League countries are under pressure from radical Islamic movements and
a
potentially nuclear Iran. Polls show that Palestinians and Israelis are
in a
mood to compromise. The advisers have told Obama he should lose no time in
pursuing
the policy in the first six to 12 months in office while he enjoys
maximum
goodwill. Obama is also looking to break a diplomatic deadlock over
Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. A possible way forward,
suggested last spring by Dennis Ross, a senior Obama adviser and former
Middle
East envoy, would be to persuade Russia to join in tough economic
sanctions
against Iran by offering to modify the US plan for a “missile shield”
in eastern Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Russia could cancel
a
tit-for-tat deployment of missiles close to the Polish border if
America gave
up its proposed missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic. Ross argued in a paper on How to Talk to Iran that “if the
Iranian threat goes away, so does the principal need to deploy these
[antimissile] forces. [Vladimir] Putin [the Russian prime minister] has
made
this such a symbolic issue that this trade-off could be portrayed as a
great
victory for him”. Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to
Israel,
accompanied Obama on a visit to Israel last July. They also travelled
to
Ramallah, where Obama questioned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader,
about
the prospects for the Arab plan. According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: “The
Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give
them peace
with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.” Kurtzer submitted a paper to Obama on the question before
this
month’s presidential elections. He argued that trying to reach
bilateral
peace agreements between Israel and individual countries in the Middle
East,
was a recipe for failure as the record of Bill Clinton and George W
Bush
showed. In contrast, the broader Arab plan “had a lot of appeal”. A
leading Democratic expert on the Middle East said: “There’s not a
lot of meat on the bones yet, but it offers recognition of Israel
across the
Arab world.” Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the
front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin
Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to
borders
that predate the Six Day war in 1967. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, last week expressed his
support for
Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank Golan and east Jerusalem. Linda...
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