Arab League Unanimous

Arab leaders pose for a photo ahead of the opening session of the annual summit of the Arab league at the King Abdul Aziz Conventional Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Wednesday, March 28, 2007. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

News from the Arab League summit varies, depending on the source.

JPost: Arab League refuses to change plan

Israel adopted a low-key, wait-and-see approach Wednesday night to the Arab League's unanimous decision to relaunch without changes its land-and-refugee-for-peace initiative from March 2002.

The Prime Minister's Office responded to the Arab League decision taken earlier in the day in Riyadh by saying that Israel would "study in detail the initiative and see if there is anything new, any changes, and then respond."

.... In recent weeks Israel had sent signals to the Arab League urging it to change two articles in the initiative viewed in Jerusalem as enshrining the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. Initial reports from the summit indicated that there was no alteration in the original initiative.

The initiative also calls for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem in return for a peace agreement, an end to the conflict and normal relations.

Let us not be fooled. Caroline Glick clarified the Saudi plan as follows:

That initiative calls for Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem; Israeli acceptance of blame for the Arab world's refusal to accept the right of the Jewish people to national sovereignty; and Israeli acceptance of millions of foreign-born, hostile Arabs within its truncated borders. After Israel makes these suicidal concessions the Arab peace initiative states that the Arab world will be willing to recognize a defunct and defenseless Arab-majority State of Israel.

Norway is into it, but this was to be expected since they were first to "break the ice" by withdrawing from the economic boycott [link is to Aljazeera] of PA/HAMAS and renewing ties with the terrorists.

On behalf of Norway, I express my solidarity with the people of the Arab world in their quest for freedom, opportunity and development, [Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr] Stoere said in his statement.

Sweden is following their lead.

Analysis at Haaretz sees the Arab League attempting to mend internall rifts, while the BBC transmutes the inexorable pertinacity of the Arab world so that it somehow appears as Three No's from Israel:

Under the plan, Arab nations would recognise Israel if Israel withdrew from land occupied in the 1967 war, accepted a Palestinian state, and agreed a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem".

Very clever.

The Telegraph (UK) is less circumspect: Accept peace plan or face war:

Prince Saud delivered an unequivocal warning to Israel.

"If Israel refuses, that means it doesn't want peace and it places everything back into the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers but in the hands of the lords of war," he said.

Prince Saud dismissed any further diplomatic overtures towards Israel. "It has never been proven that reaching out to Israel achieves anything," he said.

Oh, and al Reuters wants to make sure you know the opinion of the "Egyptian scholar,"

Youssef "we are a nation of jihad" al-Qaradawi.

The ADL has more on this "theologian of terror."

Abu Mazen yukks it up at the summit... with the foreign minister from the UAE.