To Get Israeli Concessions, Egypt Spits In The Pot Instead Of Sweetening It

Due to the increasingly obvious powerlessness of Abbas and the PA, Obama has been suggesting the idea of bypassing the Palestinian Arabs and trying to encourage positive gestures from the Arab world towards Israel.

Supposedly, that will be one of the topics Obama discusses when he speaks in Cairo this week.

Pity that Egypt isn't buying.

Egypt rejects U.S. plan for Arab-Israel normalization

Egypt has rejected an American proposal for gradual normalization between the Arab world and Israel that would have allowed Israeli planes to fly freely through Arab air space.

The idea arose during discussions in Washington last week between Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and senior White House and State Department officials, including National Security Advisor James Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In an interview with the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al Awsat, Aboul Gheit said that U.S. officials had asked him what the Arab response would be if Washington pressured Israel to reach a peace agreement. He responded that after the Oslo Accords were signed, some Arab states allowed Israeli offices to open in their territory, but today, the Arab world insists on seeing concrete Israeli action before making any further gestures.

If Israel accedes to international demands, he continued, "the Arab states could accede to gradual normalization, each according to its own considerations." [emphasis added]

This is the carrot that Egypt wants to dangle in front of Israel to get it to take up insecure borders and have to negotiate on Palestinian Arab refugees living in Israel--that there is no obligation on the Arab side to normalize relations with Israel.

And there's more:

Aboul Gheit also rejected Jerusalem's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, saying this would endanger Israel's Arabs - "especially when Israel has a foreign minister who calls for expelling the Arabs to Palestine, or outside of Israel ... It is also impossible to rule out the possibility of an Israeli leader arising one day and saying, 'the number of Arabs in the state has risen, and we must reduce their demographic weight to maintain Israel's Jewish character.'"

Well, if we are going to take into account what future leaders might one time say or do--surely Israel should be just as concerned, if not more so. That is especially true based on the model of the peace treaties Israel has with Egypt and Jordan:

Indeed, relations between the 57 Arab and Muslim countries are neither strong nor multifaceted. Israel forced more than 50 normalization agreements upon Egypt, borne to a large extent out of a naive belief and the hidden assumption that "normal relations" are another guarantee that will prevent an outbreak of hostilities. Egyptian civilian society, including its elites, continued to boycott Israel, not just because a solution has yet to be found to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it is hard to expect "normal relations" with Jordan - where two-thirds of its population is of Palestinian origin - beyond dialogue between governments, though that too has waned in recent years.

But it is hard to blame Gheit for his taking such a stand. 

After all, Obama is giving every impression of handing over Israel on a silver platter.

Technorati Tag: Egypt and Ahmed Aboul Gheit.