Who Needs a Palestinian State?

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish.com
Monday, May 18, 2009

Everyone, and by "everyone" I mean the denizens of Washington D.C.'s and Brussel's government buildings, agrees that we need a Palestinian state. Chiming in with their "Yes" votes are the dictators of a dozen Arab states who agree that the only thing that will fix the region is adding another Arab dictatorship to the place, and subtracting the region's one democracy.But who actually needs a Palestinian state? Or rather a second Palestinian state. The first Palestinian state, commonly called Jordan, was carved out of the Palestine Mandate and equipped with a refugee Saudi royal family. Today Jordan exists mainly under the protection of the US and Israel, and its population of Palestinian Arabs is a seething mass of Muslim extremists currently enjoying a 30 percent unemployment rate, where the majority of the population supports Osama Bin Laden, at a higher percentage rate than even Pakistan.

But Jordan is practically heaven on earth compared to the Second Palestinian State that the Obama Administration is to determined to inflict on Israel.

Currently ruled by mutually hostile armed gangs loyal to either the Fatah or Hamas terrorist groups, Palestine 2.0 has already been a failed state for over a decade. Every attempt at foreign investment has failed. The ruins of industrial zones, greenhouses and even a casino, dot the landscape. Palestinian Arab Christians from overseas who returned to build up the economy fled quickly in the face of relentless shakedowns, kidnappings and militia gangs masquerading as law enforcement.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs work for two employers. The UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority... which in turn is funded by foreign donors. Work for the Palestinian Authority usually means belonging to a militia gang which is loyal to a particular figure in the PA leadership, who in turn passes that loyalty on to the current "government". With little to do, the gangs spend their free time dealing drugs, carrying out terrorist attacks and collecting protection money from their town's remaining stores.

For 17 years, Israel, America and just about every interested party has tried to build a Palestinian state. They provided weapons and training to build a modern Palestinian police force. They sent advisers and fortunes in economic aid, thousands per Palestinian Arab. They created industrial zones and transferred greenhouses. Billions in funds from the EU, America and various do-gooders were swallowed up to fund the lavish lifestyles of Arafat and his henchmen.

To those who argue that a Palestinian State will build regional stability, the rational person must ask, how in the world has any of this contributed to regional stability?

Year after year, the proposed Palestinian State has become a worse place. Given autonomy, its own military, political, legal and economic system-- "Palestine" has made the region more unstable than ever. Terrorism has increased. Violence has increased. General instability has increased. Proposing that more of this will stabilize the region is akin to a man setting fire to one piece of furniture after another in his living room, and claiming that when the entire room is on fire, it will be a safe place to live.So I ask again, who needs a Palestinian state? If the Palestinian Arabs really wanted a state (a second state) in Gaza, the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, they could have had it before 1967, when those territories were in Arab hands. Instead the PLO back then called for no Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. As Clinton discovered to his chagrin at the end of his term, Arafat did not actually want a state and was not interested in accepting an Israeli offer that gave him 99 percent of what he wanted. Is it really any surprise that Hamas today follows the same exact party line?

And really why would they want a Palestinian state? If a state was actually created, the UNRWA would have to close up shop. A Palestinian state could no longer rely on foreign donors to fund the hundred thousand or so armed gangsters who form its "government" and its only real form of employment. And the same Muslim states who pass along "charity" to help fund the "martyr operations" that are behind much of the local terrorism would turn elsewhere.

Instead for 17 years the same tired opera has been playing in the region's one theater. First the world's statesmen and diplomats descend on Israel, crying that the only hope for the region's stability is a Palestinian state. Next the Israeli diplomats arrive with a generous territorial offer, counterbalanced by a second clause that asks that there be no more terrorism. That second clause is immediately ignored by everyone in the room.

Next the Palestinian Authority diplomats arrive demanding twice as much land, no more border security preventing terrorists from entering Israel, half of Israel's capital, contiguous borders that would cut Israel in half, the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from territories claimed by them... and finally the return of the "refugees", which is code for unlimited immigration from their proposed Palestinian State into Israel.
The Israelis make a counteroffer. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of rejecting peace. The Palestinian Arabs begin carrying out terrorist attacks again (assuming they even bothered to stop during the negotiations). Israel bombs the terrorists. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of perpetuating the cycle of violence, and urge everyone to go back to the negotiating table. By the time that happens a year later, the Palestinian Arabs have doubled their demands, and the whole "Cycle of Peacemaking" repeats itself all over again.

The "not so secret" secret here is that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a state or peace. 17 years of running the Palestinian Authority into the ground have shown how utterly incapable Fatah and Hamas are of running anything, besides armed gangs, mosques and occasional social services to their loyalist families... all funded from abroad.

The Palestinian ruling powers derive their authority from two forces

1. The Muslim desire to destroy Israel as an infidel state whose existence contradicts Islam. This keeps the money and arms flowing in to the different factions, as well as provides popular support by Arabs. Which is why no Palestinian leader will recognize and accept the existence of Israel. It is why Arafat negotiated out of one side of his mouth and ordered terrorist attacks out of the other. It is why after his death. his Fatah movement has lost credibility and popular support to Hamas due to its increasing inability to kill Israelis.

2. Western and Israel diplomats who keep trying to create a Palestinian state out of the bizarre notion that such a state would bring the terrorism to an end. Like all Dhimmi behaviors in regard to Islam, they ignore the fact that the short term goal of terrorism is terrorism. The long term goal of terrorism is to conquer and hold the territory of the terrorized. There is no room for the middle ground of compromise in that equation. It's either absolute power, or nothing at all.
Terrorism is practiced by armed gangs and movements who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Proposing that they stop being terrorists is a lot like walking into GM and suggesting that instead of making cars, they should make donuts and hand them out for free, so everyone will be happy.

Palestinian nationalism has always been a crock, a transparently phony justification for terrorism that has always come before nationalism. Palestine was never a country or a state. It was the name given by the Roman occupation forces to a region they were administering, a region far larger than modern day Israel. There was never an Arab Palestinian king or ruler until Arafat. There was never a separate country called Palestine. The Post WW1 Palestine Mandate in the 20th century was used to create two states, an Arab state, Jordan, and a smaller state, Israel.

Now the drive is on to create Palestine 2.0, despite the obvious fact that the Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to prevent it from coming into being. Nearly two decades of terrorism have turned the endless rounds of peace negotiations into a joke. Half the Palestinian Authority is now ruled by the Iranian backed Hamas terrorist group, which insists it will never recognize or accept permanent peace with Israel. A state of affairs that never would have come into being, had Israel not completely withdrawn from Gaza in the first place.

So once again, who wants or needs a Palestinian state?

Israel did not come into being out of pity for the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Nor did it come into being thanks to US aid or support. Both of those however are common myths.

The State of Israel was in place well before the Holocaust, in the form of an embryonic country of farmers who drained the swamps, businessmen who set up shops, journalists who printed newspapers, and soldiers who trained to protect and defend their homeland. When the UN recognized Israel, it simply accepted the fait accompli that Israel existed and was capable of taking care of itself, which it proved by fighting the armies of the surrounding Arab nations to a standstill. It did it without US military aid, which only came into the picture much later with the Kennedy administration. It did it, because the people of Israel genuinely wanted their own state and worked to make it happen.

By 1942, 17 years after the Palestine Mandate, the Jews of Israel had built a thriving country, from power generators to vast stretches of farmland, from a revived language to the Technion, created in 1924, which is considered one of the world's leading electrical engineering and computer science schools in the world.

17 years after Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have built nothing but death and destruction. Worse yet they've taken everything that was given to them and turned it into either a weapon or a bribe. By every standard, they have failed to show their ability to build or run a functioning state. Not even the most liberally minded thinker can point to anything in the Palestinian Authority leadership that suggests that they're capable of running a functional state. Which is why that same species will naturally duck the question and begin blaming Israel instead.And that highlights the real issue. The only reason for creating Palestine 2.0 is the destruction of Israel. It will not bring regional stability. It will not even bring local stability. It cannot even function unless its entire workforce is funded from abroad. It cannot even stop engaging in terrorism.

Palestine 2.0 is a Frankenstein's monster, with body parts from Shiite, Sunni and Marxist terrorists. It only knows how to do one thing and one thing alone, kill. It is not a natural creature, because no Palestinian state ever existed throughout history. It is an artificial state whose existence has only one purpose. The destruction of Israel.

And that answers our question at last. Who needs a Palestinian state? Someone who is either ignorant, foolish or needs to destroy Israel.

The Two State Solution is not a formula for any kind of stability or end to the violence. It's meant to take the violence to a whole new level. It is a formula for the destruction of Israel. 17 years of peacemaking by Israelis has produced 17 years of terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs. Everything sowed on the Palestinian Authority, from money to guns, from autonomy to infrastructure, have come up as dragon's teeth.

Palestine is not a state. It was never a state. It will never be a state. It is currently ruled by two factions who have both disowned a negotiated Palestinian state in favor of the destruction of Israel. It is not a country, it is a weapon.

Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of Israel with one goal, its destruction. Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of every Jew in the world, legitimizing the worst and ugliest kinds of bigotry. Palestine is an imaginary place given form as a vicious myth brainwashing generation after generation of Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs to call themselves Palestinians and kill and die in the name of perpetuating a second Holocaust, all for the glory of Allah, Mohammed, Marx, not to mention Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, the House of Saud, and every cause and ruler with an interest in toppling Israel into the dust.

Palestine is death. It exists only as a form of living death by a population taught to see themselves as willing martyrs to the bomb belt from birth. It breathes death, it celebrates death, it teaches death and preaches death. It is the final ugly end of the hatred and cruelty bottled up in the Arab and Islamic dictatorships of the region. It is the true face of Islam and its shining reflection in the mirror of the Western press and diplomats is the true measure of their Dhimmism.
The Cult of Death in Palestine and the war against Israel is only a preview for the West of things to come. Palestine is not a place, it is hate and homicide boiled down into myth. Palestine is not only in Israel. It is in Paris and London. It is in Madrid and Detroit. It is in Sydney and Moscow. It is everywhere that the toxic brew of Muslim fanaticism and Arab nationalism flows. Its flag is the flag of death. Its constitution is a death warrant for every free nation. Its legislature is a smug coven of obese terrorist chieftains sending their followers off to death with the promise of virgin demons fornicating with them in Paradise.

Palestine 2.0 is a monster with only one purpose, to create Holocaust 2.0. That is who needs a Palestinian state. That is why the far left and the far right are both so hellbent on bringing one into being. Accepting the Two State Solution means accepting death. Rejecting it means embracing life.

Exposed: Secret talks to carve up Israel, again

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

by Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – Israel and the Palestinian Authority are negotiating indirectly via the U.S., Jordan and Egypt to outline a future Palestinian state that would encompass Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Middle East security and diplomatic officials told WND.

Popular perception has it that talks between Israel and the PA are stalled over a Palestinian demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extend a 10-month West Bank settlement freeze to include Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem.

Just yesterday, Netanyahu's office released a statement declaring the prime minister would "never" cede control of united Jerusalem nor retreat to the 1967 borders, referring to an evacuation of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. The statement came after Egypt's foreign minister said in Cairo last week Netanyahu was ready to discuss making "Arab Jerusalem" the capital of a Palestinian state.

According to Middle East security and diplomatic officials, however, Netanyahu's statement may be misleading unless he meant he would not retreat to the exact 1967 lines. Those officials, from Egypt, Jordan, the PA and Israel, told WND in separate interviews over the course of the last few weeks that Israel is in advanced stages of outlining a future Palestinian state that would encompass most of the West Bank. Also Jerusalem is being discussed between Israel and members of the Obama administration, the officials said

To point out the advanced levels of the current talks, a PA official told WND that a visit next week by President Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones, will center around security arrangements for a future Palestinian state in the West Bank.

The arrangements may include a contingent of Jordanian troops in the strategic territory as well as private Palestinian firms and international soldiers participating in the patrol of the Palestinian side of a future border, the official said.

Regarding international forces, one Jordanian security source said there are "very serious talks about bringing international forces to the borders between the West Bank and Israel, especially the Jordan Valley, where the Israelis would have security guarantees from an international force working in collaboration with the Palestinians."

Officially, White House spokesman Mike Hammer said that in his consultations, Jones "will discuss the full range of regional challenges and opportunities at this critical time in the Middle East."

According to the Middle East security officials, Netanyahu agreed in principal to establish a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders – the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. However, Israel would retain what are known as major settlement blocks, including Ariel, Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim.

The officials said the formula, established under Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, would call for a 100 percent territorial exchange, meaning that any West Bank Jewish communities retained by Israel would be compensated to the PA using other land, such as territory in the Israeli Negev alongside the Gaza Strip.

Status of Jerusalem up for talks

With regard to Jerusalem, talks between the U.S. and Israel are in the infancy stages.

The officials from the Obama administration most publicly identified with brokering Israeli-Palestinian talks include Jones and Obama's envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, George Mitchell. However, WND has learned Dennis Ross, an Obama foreign policy adviser who served as Mideast envoy to the Clinton administration, is actively engaged in brokering a deal regarding Jerusalem.

Israeli diplomatic sources said Ross wants to use the formula established under the Clinton administration that would see Jewish sections of Jerusalem becoming Israeli while areas largely inhabited by Arabs would become Palestinian. About 100,000 Arabs live illegally on Jewish-owned land in Jerusalem.

The fact that the talks are ongoing through mediators leaves Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas open to declaring that there are no direct negotiations.

Israeli leaders in the recent past claimed talks were not occurring or did not include certain territories only later to admit the territory in question had been ceded in secret negotiations.

After months of denials the status of Jerusalem was on the table during negotiations, Olmert's office finally confirmed in August 2008 that Jerusalem had been included in talks. Also, weeks before he departed office, Olmert gave an interview to Israel's leading daily, Yediot Aharonot, admitting that during negotiations he offered Abbas 94 percent of the West Bank and peripheral areas of eastern Jerusalem. Olmert's office repeatedly had denied such talks.

Similarly, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ran for office in 2000 on the very election platform that he would not withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Sharon was running against Amram Mitzneh, a leader of Israel's leftist Labor party who had pledged to evacuate Gaza. In 2004, Sharon did an about face and announced his Gaza disengagement policy. One year later, Sharon pulled all Jewish communities out of the Gaza Strip.

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Palestinians Need a Generation or Two

Israpundit.com

by: Eli E. Hertz, Myths and Facts

“Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” is antisemitism.

A Case in Point: Yardsticks - Turkey versus Palestinian Arabs.

For over 46 years, Turkey has knocked on Europe’s door requesting membership in the European Union. The Europeans, however, have been in no rush to invite a Muslim country into their midst, even if it is the most westernized and most democratic Muslim country in the Middle East. To add to it, Turkey is already a strategic partner in NATO and nearly 3 million of its citizens are peaceful and productive immigrants/guest workers in Europe.

Joining the EU, however, demands of Turkey far-reaching political and social reform “on the ground” and “10 to 15 years of negotiations” while the Turks prove democratic changes are “irreversible.”

On the other end, U.S. [and the Quartet] yardsticks for the Palestinian Arabs, a hostile society demanding statehood, amount to praise for fabricated non-existent reforms and call to abandon the required incremental progress as clearly stated in the “goal-driven Roadmap.”

The end to violence and democratic reform, that Palestinians have yet to begin, is tolerable by the U.S. administration - all in order to forge the way for the establishment of a Palestinian state within two years, one which will endanger the very survival of a free and democratic Israel and the rest of the free world.

Comparison of the goals and the ramifications of each:

The Turks’ goal is membership in the European Union - a political alliance that the Europeans have already stated will have an iron-clad reversibility clause for Turkey if it fails to live up to its commitments.

The Palestinians’ goal is sovereignty as a State - status for which there is no reversibility mechanism if ‘Palestine’ turns into a rogue state - the kind of polity the U.S. is currently grappling with in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and elsewhere.

Logically, the yardsticks of judging readiness and maturity should be at least equal, if not more stringent for the Palestinian Arabs, a society that consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage, with a leadership that champions the murder of Jews and suicide bombers.

Freedom House, a non-sectarian organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt to monitor civil rights around the world, appraised the Palestinian Authority with the lowest possible rating in its 2009 survey - deeming it “Not [a] Free” society. At that level political rights and civil liberties are absent or virtually nonexistent, and people experience severely restricted rights of expression and association - all as a result of the extremely oppressive nature of the regime.

These “realities on the ground” are totally ignored by the EU and the U.S. in their effort to advance immediate Palestinian statehood.

Requiring Israel to cede parts of its land in favour of the Palestinians’ empty promises, while their Charters call for the dismantling of the Jewish State, is “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The Palestinians’ Unilateral “Kosovo Strategy”:

Israpundit
Jan. 12, 2010

As far as I am concerned the key impediment to this happening is that statehood has never been recognized on land the fledgling state didn’t control.
Implications for the PA and Israel
Dan Diker, jcpa

SUMMARY

* Mahmoud Abbas’ new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.

* Senior Palestinian officials note that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo’s February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. European and U.S. support for Kosovo’s unilateral declaration has led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, despite that fact that leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.

* The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.

* The Palestinian “Kosovo strategy” includes a campaign of delegitimization of Israel, seeking to isolate Israel as a pariah state, while driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The unilateral Palestinian bid for sovereignty will also likely turn the Palestinians into the leading petitioner against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court. Although the PA is not a state and therefore should have no legal standing before the court, the petition it submitted to the court after the Gaza war was not rejected by the ICC.

* Finally, a unilateral Palestinian quest for the 1947 lines may well continue even if the 1967 lines are endorsed by the United Nations. The PLO’s 1988 declaration of independence was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognizes the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, not the 1967 lines, as the basis for the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state.

(Continued....below)

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

http://jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=2&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=3271&TTL=The_Palestinians%27_Unilateral_%22Kosovo_Strategy%22:_Implications_for_the_PA_and_Israel

Yoel Marcus / Obama blowing threatening winds at Israel

By Yoel Marcus, Haaretz Correspondent

We can deny it all we like, but if it looks like a threat and sounds like a threat, then it's a threat.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is coming to Israel next week, suggested in an interview with the U.S. public television network PBS that Washington might withhold loan guarantees to Israel.

When this was interpreted as a hint meant to pressure Israel, "clarifications" poured forth from the American capital. Mitchell wasn't threatening, he was only giving a hypothetical response to the interviewer's question about the options for pressure that were available to the administration. The White House itself sent a message to the effect of, "We didn't want to threaten, only to speed up the negotiations."

The precise words and their precise meaning do not matter. The reality is that President Barack Obama is frustrated and that threatening winds are blowing from the White House toward Israel. There is a big gap between Obama's peace speeches and his Nobel Peace Prize on one hand and his inability to produce a tangible achievement on the other. And while he speaks about peace and reconciliation, he himself is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan as their fallen comrades' coffins continue to arrive back in the U.S. The question is whether they knew what they gave their lives for.

Recent talk about the Obama administration being "tired" of Israel is undoubtedly an expression of frustration with the fact that the quarter from which the Americans had expected the most has so far yielded nothing.

The threat of withholding loan guarantees recalls the commander of the British forces during the British Mandate, General Evelyn Hugh Barker, who ordered the Jews punished by "striking at their pockets." This approach did not keep the organized Jewish community from driving out the British and founding an independent state. Come what may, one thing is clear - U.S. military aid and its support of Israel in the UN Security Council will not be impaired under any circumstances.

In light of the Iranian threat we should remember how important it is to Obama to cooperate with the moderate Muslim states and to see a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to prevent another war from breaking out in the region.

Our grumbling that Obama is pro-Arab is not fair. Perhaps he doesn't admire us like some of his predecessors, but his policy does not deviate by one millimeter from theirs. The United States has never recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Succeeding administrations have consistently adhered to the demand for a return to the 1967 borders, with minor border adjustments related to security. They have also consistently objected to the settlements and have warned us many a time that they would not finance any settlement evacuations.

Mitchell is coming to the region to take the negotiations out of the freezer. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have made a commitment to a peace process based on two states for two peoples, but so far he has done nothing except to declare a freeze in construction in the settlements for 10 months and not a single day beyond. What that means exactly is not clear. It's neither an evacuation nor proof that the government wants and is capable of evacuating tens of thousands of settlers. As in "Saving Private Ryan," Washington, Cairo and Amman are working together to save Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is in deep now with his construction of a separation fence between his country and the Gaza Strip, which is deeply damaging to the status and power of Hamas. At a time like this Israel cannot make do with "freezing construction for 10 months." It sounds like a joke.

Mitchell's visit is extremely important for renewing the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He may bring with him a plan that Israel will not be able to say no to without damaging American interests. According to one knowledgeable source Jerusalem is preparing efforts to resume the talks and understands that the government is bound to them. After all, it was Netanyahu's government that drafted the two-states-for-two-peoples promissory note.

In the current domestic political situation Netanyahu could obtain the broadest parliamentary support in Israel's history - almost 80 Knesset members will support beginning vigorous negotiations aimed at reaching a settlement and drawing permanent borders, with the active involvement and assistance of the United States.

Enough already with the shticks and the tricks, it's time to show leadership.

Syria's Assad seeks to seal Fatah-Hamas reconciliation

Syria's Assad

By Zvi Bar'el
HAARETZ.COM

Syrian President Bashar Assad is expected to host Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas this week, and to complete the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation process, following an agreement between Assad and Saudi King Abdullah last week. Reports in the Arab media said that Assad will try to arrange a meeting between Abbas and the head of Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshal, to persuade the latter to sign the reconciliation agreement formulated during recent talks in Egypt.

A Palestinian source close to Abbas told Haaretz, however, that, "Abbas will not meet with Meshal before Meshal signs the accord, but it doesn't matter where it's done - in Egypt or Damascus

Meshal met yesterday with the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who also urged the Hamas leader to sign the document, so that the political process can move forward. Syria sees promotion of a Palestinian summit and of Fatah-Hamas reconciliation as an important means to leverage its position as a senior partner in the Middle East negotiations, after a long period in which it was sidelined by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United States. If Syria can help to accomplish the reconciliation, observers say, this will pave its way to a better relationship with Washington and to the appointment of an American ambassador to Damascus. Yesterday more details of the Egyptian plan, presented in Washington on Friday, emerged at a press conference held by Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Speaking after a meeting with intelligence minister Omar Suleiman, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary for Defense Robert Gates, Aboul Gheit said that an agreement had to be reached, before formal talks with Israel, on the size of the Palestinian state. "Arabs and Palestinians will never agree to see Palestine on territory which is smaller than it had, according to the 1967 borders," he said. "If the United States agrees to this principle, Israel will have to make a decision between territorial exchange and evacuating settlements." The Egyptian plan also envisages Jerusalem as an "open city," without a wall between East and West Jerusalem. Aboul Ghait said he doesn't see the possibility of a U.S.-Egyptian-Israeli-Palestinian summit before there is agreement on the size of Palestine.