| How can they risk what they never had? |
Palestinians had to put aside internal differences and face other challenges, he said, citing what he described as a growing right-wing camp in Israel pursuing an uncompromising “fortress Israel” mindset rather than “integration in the region”.
“All of us have to work to reach out to our Palestinian brothers and get them to take a step back and see that this is not the time for infighting,” King Abdullah told Reuters in an interview at the royal palace in Amman. “A lot is at stake today and if we fail now, we risk pushing Palestinian aspirations so far behind that it will take a long time to bring us back to where we want to be, and in the process, risk the future of Palestine,” the monarch added.
| Not to mention the future of Jordan, since the king remembers that 60% of his population is Paleo. |
| The Paleos decamp for Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon and settle down to lead productive lives? |
Jordan, which hosts the largest number of Palestinians outside the West Bank and Gaza, is worried Jewish settlement and expropriation of land will leave Israel with substantial parts of the territory it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. “I think we are really running out of time. Physically on the ground and geographically, I think there is less and less of a West Bank and Jerusalem to talk about,” said Abdullah. “...We want to go back to the 1967 borders. We are talking about that today. Are we going to talk about that tomorrow though? This is the danger,” he said.
| If the Paleos had kept the lid on last year Sharon and then Olmert would have started a pull-out from the West Bank. Iran and Hezbollah made sure from the north and Hamas made sure from the south that there would be no inkling of peace whatsoever. Abdullah knows that but won't say it, of course, 'cause he doesn't want to end up like Grandpa. |
Abdullah said a peace plan drawn by Arab states including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, envisaged speeding up a 2003 US-sponsored road map for peace and offered a “window of opportunity to resolve the core Middle East conflict”. “If we don’t engage the Israelis today what will the landscape be two years from now?” he said.
The Arab peace plan also envisages Arab moderates for the first time assisting in the negotiating process and helping the Palestinians seek better terms from Israel, the monarch said. “The Arabs have to step in. They need to be close to the negotiating table when the Israelis and Palestinians sit,” he said. “There is a great opportunity (in the plan) but there is a great danger of missing it ... especially if civil war happens.”
| Because the Arabs are so good at negotiating solutions to problems, everyone knows that. |