The Arab League summit meeting at Kuwait on Wednesday maintained the ancient Muslim tradition of saying “no” when it comes to Israel and stated a thunderous denial of the idea of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
“We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state,” it said on one of the few if not only issues that united the League’s members.
Officials told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency that Arab envoys are thinking about withdrawing the Saudi 2002 “Peace Initiative” that promised “normalization” of ties with Israel, without any explicit statement of diplomatic recognition, in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian Authority country based on the 1949 Temporary Armistice borders and for Israel’s accepting the immigration of millions of foreign Arabs whose only connection with Israel is that they are considered “refugees.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry continues to march into the Peace Talks Cemetery and flew from Rome to Amman Wednesday for an emergency meeting with Mahmoud Abbas.
The Obama administration has constantly put public pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to surrender to Arab demands while keeping the pressure on Abbas under wraps.
Pundits are trumpeting the scheduled release of the last of 104 terrorists, always are referred to as “prisoners,” as the stumbling block to the diplomatic stalemate, but during the last eight months of a dialogue with the deaf, Palestinian Authority officials have made it increasingly clear they feel confident enough to end the so–called peace talks and return to the United Nations to win recognition based on its own terms.
The best Kerry can hope for is an extension of the talks he has orchestrated, but he might do one better by blaming Netanyahu and Abbas and giving the Peace Process another indecent burial.