Initiative: Middle East peace conference without Israel
Initiative: Middle East peace conference without Israel
Insight magazine reports recent American government proposal to hold peace conference without Israeli presence. Baker says goal is to 'reach agreement without Jewish pressure'
Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 12.07.06, 10:38WASHINGTON - According to Thursday's issue of the conservative Washington Times' Insight magazine, the White House was looking into proposal by former Secretary of State James Baker to hold a Middle East peace conference without Israel .
As reported by the magazine, officials said the conference would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq's future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war.
A source in the US government was quoted in the report as saying, "As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the US to strike a deal without Jewish pressure. This has become the hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month."
Other sources in the government told the magazine that the proposal was supported by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Under Secretary of Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.
Renewed pressure on Israel
Also, government sources were quoted as saying Baker's proposal to exclude Israel from a regional peace conference was receiving a lot of support due to Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia last November, during which sources in the country made it clear that Israel, and not Iran, was the cause of instability in the Middle East.
A US government source claimed that Cheney's original goal of the trip – to enlist Saudi Arabia's support in Iraq - was never even discussed. In addition, the source said that instead, the Saudi's demanding an initiative to end Israel's attacks on Gaza and Cheney merely agreed.
Baker's current initiative was to have the US enlist the aid of Arab States in exchange for an American commitment to renew pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
According to the Associated Press, a high-level commission said Wednesday after nearly four years of war and the deaths of more than 2,900 U.S. troops, the situation was "grave and deteriorating", President Bush's policy in Iraq was "not working", and America's ability "to influence events within Iraq is diminishing".
The question is very simple, do you side with G-D or do you not.
When we look at the Torah it starts with Bereshit or for the Christan's reading this, Genesis.
The first thing that G-D tells us is how he created the world and in the Talmud we learn the reason for this is that the day would come when the world as a whole would question the right of the Jewish people to live in the Land that G-D promised us.
The simple fact is, that the center or heartland of Biblical Israel is Judea and Samaria (west bank) and Jerusalem was where King David ruled from and his son built the Temple to G-D there.
If America follows the advice of Baker and tries for a Madrid 2, since Baker failed to destroy Israel with Madrid 1, nothing good can come out of it.
Will America reject G-D and his people or will she stand by Israel, a real simple question?
