Despite all his election promises and assurances to Jewish groups and Israelis, Barack Obama plans to throw his weight behind the Saudi royal family’s 2002 plan to roll back Israel to at least its 1949 borders, the Times of London reported Sunday, citing sources close to America’s president-elect.

While the Saudi plan calls for recognition of Israel by Arab states, such promises have historically proven of scant value relative to the “hard currency” of territorial retreats. Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party, and President Shimon Peres, have said that the Saudi plan could be a starting point for discussions but have stopped far short of accepting it.

Contrary to Obama’s promises at the last AIPAC conference in support of an “undivided Jerusalem” — a position he retreated from days later — the Saudi plan divides Jerusalem, hands over the Old City, Temple Mount and the adjacent Western Wall to the Arabs, and calls on Israel to take responsibility for the “Palestinian refugee problem.” It requires Israel to restore the strategic Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish their capital in east Jerusalem. It would dismantle all Jewish settlements and even Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, dislocating nearly a half-million Israelis, and leaving the state behind what diplomatic dove Abba Eban described as “Auschwitz borders.”

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.

Apparently there are many crazy Israeli, since the Saudi plan is unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud, the frontrunner to be prime minister in the next round of elections, slated for February 2009.

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, stepping far beyond the ceremonial role that the Presidential role typically accords. He was loudly applauded for sycophantically 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.”

There are unconfirmed reports that the conference had to be temporarily suspended as Peres sought with difficulty to extract his proboscis from the rectum of the plenum.

A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers have urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory as the basis for an imposed solution on Israel. The advisers — enemies of Israel all — included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser.

Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser and Israel bashed, piled on as well, suggesting that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was “a way to psychologically change the mood of the region”.

According to a Washington source, Obama told West Bank constable Mahmoud Abbas: “The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.”

Dan Kurtzer, a former Ambassador to Israel, submitted a paper to Obama on the question before this month’s presidential elections arguing 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.”

military sources report that Israeli government leaders have misread the motives behind Hamas’two-week missile-rocket-mortar assault on Israel as jockeying for better terms when the six-month truce comes up for renewal next month. Their decision to mute Israel’s military response to the ongoing violence stems from their misplaced expectation that the attacks will stop once the truce is in the bag.

Israeli intelligence circles challenge this perception. They estimate that Hamas will continue escalating the violence at least up until Israel’s general election on Feb. 10, 2009, forcing more than a quarter of a million suffering citizens to live on a never-ending knife edge.

The Hamas rationale falls into three parts:

1. The 25-kilometer range Grad multiple-launch rockets, which the radical terrorists have vowed to continue firing against the Mediterranean port-town of Ashkelon, will also be directed further north to Ashdod, Israel’s most important port after Haifa. This will keep Hamas at center stage of Israel’s election campaign and demonstrate who really influences the Israeli voter. This maneuver, learned from the Palestinian master terrorist, who used to step up the violence before Israeli elections, will put rival Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose “peace talks” with Israel came to naught, in the shade.

2. Hamas is not scared by the prospect of the Olmert government being driven to a major military operation in Gaza. Its leaders calculate that it will be so costly in casualties for the Palestinian population and Israeli troops alike that an international outcry will force the IDF to cut the campaign short without achieving its goals.

3. Forcing the Israeli army to withdraw without a victory will enhance Hamas’ standing in Gaza and the West Bank – just like Hizballah after the 2006 Lebanon war.

In Hamas’ view, the compromise proposals put forward by Egyptian intelligence minister Omar Suleiman in his bid to broker a Palestinian power-sharing deal was biased in favor of Abbas and his Fatah. This left the Hamas free to walk away and instead build up its violent assaults on Israeli towns and villages.

Despite the ongoing missile attacks, Israel decided Sunday, Nov. 17, to allow 30 trucks of humanitarian aid through to Gaza. However, fuel consignments have been stopped until further notice.

Palestinian Authority slams offer that would see Israel hand over 92.7% of West Bank and all of Gaza as ‘not serious’

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected an Israeli peace proposal because it does not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Abbas’ office said on Tuesday.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, who is also a spokesman for the Palestinian leader, said the proposal did not fall in line with requirements of the Road Map and the Annapolis understandings that the borders of the future Palestinian state should correspond with Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with ‘Abbas last week as part of an ongoing series of meetings to push forward the peace process.

Abu Rudeina was responding to a report in the Israeli daily Haaretz on Tuesday that said Israel had made the proposal, which included land compensation and an offer of a corridor that would connect the Gaza Strip with the West Bank. This corridor would allow free passage of Palestinians between the two areas without security checks.

Under the deal, Israel would maintain large blocs of Jewish communities in post-1967 territories.

Under Olmert’s offer, Israel would keep 7 percent of the West Bank, while the Palestinians would receive territory equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank. Israel views the passage between Gaza and the West Bank as compensating for this difference: Though it would officially remain in Israeli hands, it would connect the two halves of the Palestinian state - a connection the Palestinians did not enjoy before 1967, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control and the West Bank was part of Jordan.

[caption id="attachment_170" align="alignright" width="194" caption="Mahmoud Abbas"][/caption]

Ynetnews Haaretz

By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM - Israel’s prime minister pledged to free more than 150 Palestinian prisoners in a meeting Wednesday with President Mahmoud Abbas, a gesture meant to energize their sluggish peace talks.
The release could also boost the prestige of the embattled Palestinian leader, whose Fatah movement is engaged in a tense power struggle with the militant Islamic Hamas.
The meeting at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence was the first since the Israeli premier announced last week that he would resign next month because of corruption investigations against him. Palestinians have been seeking assurances that peace talks, started with great fanfare at a U.S.-sponsored conference last November, would continue despite Israel’s political turmoil.

Olmert says he is determined to press ahead with peace efforts as long as he is in office. Because of Israel’s complicated political system, his term could extend into next year.
The Olmert-Abbas summit came on the day Israel freed five Palestinian prisoners as part of its exchange with Hezbollah guerrillas to bring back the bodies of two soldiers captured in 2006.

With Hamas demanding freedom for several hundred prisoners in exchange for Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier also captured in 2006, Abbas needs to show his people that he can win freedom for prisoners in Israeli jails by peaceful means, as opposed to the militants’ tactics of attacks and abductions.
However, the modest numbers Abbas achieved were not likely to prompt celebration among Palestinians or reduce Hamas’ influence. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that on Aug. 25, “more than 150″ prisoners would be freed, out of about 11,000 held by Israel.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said prisoners would be released this month “as a confidence-building measure, as a gesture of good will.”
But it was seen highly unlikely that Olmert would agree to a key Abbas demand: freedom for Marwan Barghouti, the highest Fatah official in Israeli custody, who is serving multiple life terms for involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israeli officials said only that Olmert did not commit to specific names.

Barghouti is also said to be on the list of prisoners Hamas wants released in exchange for the soldier it is holding, but Israel is unlikely to give that kind of boost to the Islamic militants, who do not recognize Israel and have sent dozens of suicide bombings to attack Israelis.

Over the past week, tensions have flared again between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah, starting with a bombing in Gaza that killed five Hamas militants and a girl. Hamas reacted with mass arrests of Fatah loyalists and Fatah hit back with arrests in the West Bank. Then over the weekend, Hamas launched an assault on a Fatah stronghold in Gaza City, an operation that ended with 11 dead, dozens wounded and about 90 Fatah fugitives fleeing Gaza for the West Bank.

On Tuesday a Hamas official hinted darkly of a Hamas uprising similar to its sweep through Gaza last year, when it expelled Fatah forces and took over the territory.
After nightfall Palestinians fired a rocket at Israel from Gaza, the military said, in violation of a June 18 cease-fire. It exploded harmlessly in a field.
Israel is trying to stay out of the internal Palestinian conflict, but it is negotiating with Abbas while boycotting Hamas as a terror group.
Some Israelis have hinted that Barghouti, who had broad contacts with Israeli doves, might be freed someday — but probably in the context of significant progress toward a peace accord. Israel’s official position is that Palestinians convicted in fatal attacks cannot be freed.
However, it has made exceptions, most recently three weeks ago when it released Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar as part of the Hezbollah deal. Kantar was convicted of the 1979 killing an Israeli father, his daughter and a policeman.
Erekat said Abbas asked for release of imprisoned politicians, including Barghouti, as well as hundreds who have served more than 20 years in prison, women and minors. But Erekat said the criteria were not agreed on at the meeting.