Everyone who is anyone – the UN, the EU, the New York Times, the Arab world, the Israeli Left, Charlie Rose, the Council on Foreign Relations – has for the past three weeks been all atwitter about the peace proposal by de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah. Prince Abdullah's overture, which he made during an audience he gave to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, and which Friedman unveiled in his February 17 column, generously called on Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. That would mean handing over all of the land that Israel had conquered in its defensive Six Day War in 1967 against an Arab armada: The West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights (which no one has mentioned), East Jerusalem.

In return, the Saudi prince offered the Jews of Israel ... nothing. Oh, he said that the Jews could retain "sovereignty" over the Wailing Wall (how generous of him, to offer what was not his to give), but nothing would stop the Palestinians from violating that sovereignty. Indeed, I predict that were Israel so foolish as to surrender East Jerusalem, home of Judaism's holiest sites, the Palestinians would immediately celebrate, by dynamiting the Wailing Wall (see "Joseph's Tomb"). If Israel sent in troops to restore control of Jewish holy sites, and stop Moslems' defilement and destruction of them (as was routine, Moslem practice from 1948-1967), the Palestinians would declare the incursion an act of war, and would have the backing of the entire Islamic world.

Prince Abdullah has promised a full normalization of relations between the Arab world and Israel. You could say, that Israel and the Arab world have enjoyed "normal" relations for 54 years. As long as Israel has existed, the Arab world has sought to annihilate it. All that Prince Abdullah's offer means, is that Arab nations would send ambassadors to Israel. Except that Abdullah does not speak for the Arab world.

Oh, well. One might think, 'Perhaps the Israelis could, during negotiations, get some traction from the Saudis.' Negotiations, what negotiations? Prince Abdullah has made it clear that his offer is non-negotiable. In English, the traditional phrase describing the Prince's overture, is a demand for unconditional surrender.

When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke about talking the matter over with the Saudis, Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations threw a hissy fit on the New York Times' op-ed page. In "Will Israel Take a Chance?," Siegman wrote of "the unattainable conditions imposed by Mr. Sharon," insisting that "Mr. Sharon's refusal to take any notice of the new Saudi position should finally bring home to President Bush and his advisers that Mr. Sharon's insistence that there be no negotiations until all Palestinian violence ceases can only be an excuse to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza."

Meanwhile, Siegman blew kisses Prince Abdullah's way: "no one who has heard him express his pain over the humiliation and suffering of the Palestinians can doubt the genuineness of his feelings on this subject — something one would be hard-pressed to say about other Arab leaders."

In his valentine to the Saudis and the "Palestinians," Siegman also called for President Bush to demand an end to "Israeli provocation." To read Siegman, you'd think the Palestinians and the Saudis were our allies, and that it was the evil Jews who 17 months earlier had launched a terror campaign against Arab women and children. To read Siegman, you'd never know that the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 were almost all Saudis, dispatched by a Saudi, financed by the Saudis.

(Another, equally pro-Arab plan had been set forth in the February 17 New York Times, by Jerome M. Segal, president of the Jewish Peace Lobby, and a University of Maryland academic. Segal called for the U.N. – the world's second most anti-Semitic international body, after the Arab League – to take over matters, and force a peace on the parties. In Jerome Segal's fancy, the U.N. has sovereignty over Jerusalem and the territories. Segal was merely acting as a front man for the Arabs, who favor using the U.N. to force their agenda on Israel.)

Last week on The Charlie Rose Show, former Sen. George Mitchell applauded the Prince's plan, but cautioned that his commission "recommended that each side take a series of reciprocities that would bring about gradual [steps] towards final status talks."

But were Sharon to accept the Saudi ultimatum, there would be nothing left for the Israelis to negotiate. A negotiation presupposes that each side has something the other wants, and that each side – or a third party – can somehow hurt the other in the case of non-compliance. But a nation that weakens itself and thereby strengthens its enemies, is no longer in a position to make those enemies pay for their treachery. Prince Abdullah understands this all too well.

The prince has offered security guarantees; so did Yasser Arafat in the 1993 Oslo accords. And recall, that in the Camp David accords, Israel weakened itself in a land-for-peace deal, returning to Egypt the strategic Sinai Peninsula that it had won in the Six Day War in 1967.

That Egypt has not attacked Israel since 1973 is cold comfort; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke in threatening terms in October, 2000, in support of the "Palestinians." At the time, he demanded that the "peace process" serve only Arab interests, and even before the "Palestinians" began their present guerilla war, one of Mubarak's top commanders, Field Marshal Abd Al-Halim Abu Ghazaleh, had said that for Egypt, war with Israel was "inevitable." In July, 2000, CNS News reported that "Author and Islamic Affairs expert Victor Mordechai said ... 'The plan has never changed. [When Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak was an ambitious career officer, he said he would be the next Saladin.' Saladin was an Islamic military leader who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187."

Giving up the fortified Golan Heights would embolden Syria, even more than the removal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000 emboldened Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Arafat, the PLO, and the other "Palestinian" terrorist organizations have never given up their vision of an Arab "Palestine" standing from sea to sea, in place of the present Israel.

This land-for-peace business is nothing but slow death; "security guarantees" are an Arab punch line.

And then there are the things the Prince left unspoken. The "Palestinians" demand "the right of return" to Israel. So, too, did Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in a March 5 statement – in which he also demanded the return of the Golan Heights – after meeting with Prince Abdullah.

This would mean that every Arab claiming to be a descendant of someone who had lived in Israel prior to its 1948 founding, would have the right to emigrate to Israel, be instantly granted citizenship, and get reparations in the form of property and money (jobs, too!). Millions of Arabs would immediately emigrate to Israel. The Palestinian plan is to take over, either run off or kill all the Jews, and steal their property and their nation.

Like the demand for East Jerusalem, the call for a right of return is a non-starter. Many of the Arabs living in Israel at its founding sold their property to Jews. No matter; their descendants would head to Israel, demanding property and money. Many more Arabs would head to Israel, whose parents or grandparents left, deserting their property – momentarily, they thought – in 1948. Those Arabs assumed that the coming Arab armada would slaughter all the Jews, and they would be able to return, getting back not only their own land, but also stealing the land of the dead Jews. Israel owes those Arabs nothing. Their families bet on the wrong horse.

A third group of Arabs were forced off their property without compensation. Israel owes those people's children monetary compensation, but not a right of return. Israel was founded as a Jewish state, not as a suicide pact.

But the compensation of the above group of Arabs would be conditional upon the Arab nations compensating the 800,000 or so Jews whom they expelled, and whose property they stole, in 1947. The Arab nations have no intention of comensating a single Jew.

The Jerusalem ultimatum (give up East Jerusalem) would alone be a deal-breaker, were the Saudis offering the Israelis a deal. Aside from that, the Prince has left issues such as the right of return off the table. That means that were Israel to surrender to the Prince's terms, after they gave the "Palestinians" their nation, the latter would then demand the right of return. If Israel refused to comply with that demand, the Saudis – and other Arab states, including the newly formed Palestine – would simply call their ambassadors home from Israel, cut off diplomatic relations, and prepare their military forces for the endgame.

Prince Abdullah knew what he was doing, in approaching the New York Times' Tom Friedman with his ultimatum. Although Friedman has had something of a rebirth since September 11 as a patriot, the Prince has his number. The influence that came from an audience with the House of Saud, has had Friedman on an "access drunk" ever since. And the Prince knew that demands published in the Times would gain instant credibility.

On Manhattan's West 43rd Street, the Sulzberger family must pump something into the ventilation system, that turns everyone into an Arabist.

Prince Abdullah apparently sees his non-peace plan as a way to prove that although he looks, quacks, and walks like our enemy, he is actually our good friend. And most of the Western press is using his demands to try and beat Israel into submission. While Henry Siegman gushed in his February 21 Times op-ed, that "Crown Prince Abdullah's statement represents a dramatic change in Saudi Arabia's position toward Israel and offers a new basis for renewed diplomatic activity," as Bret Stephens noted in the March 1 Wall Street Journal, Abdullah's ultimatum was nothing but a "regurgitation" of the proposal the Saudis had made in 1981, and again in 1991.

According to the New York Times' William Safire, who must protect himself from the fumes in the Times' newsroom by e-mailing his columns, "Saudi posturing serves three purposes: (1) to counter U.S. repugnance at financial support of hate-America mosques that resulted in the Sept. 11 attacks by 15 Saudis, (2) to pretend that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is the source of the Arab world's discontents, a pretense also adopted by Osama bin Laden, and (3) to prepare the ground for a denial of our Saudi bases to support an attack on Saddam Hussein's germ factories."

On the bright side, Arab unity may be developing some cracks. Already when Prince Abdullah presented his non-offer, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak scoffed that the Israelis would never agree to it. As late as last Tuesday, Mubarak was planning a March 27 Arab League summit on a peace plan. When Gamal Abdal Nasser (1918-1970) was alive, the Egyptians were the kings of the Arabs; Mubarak has apparently had enough of Abdullah confusing him with his manservant.

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