Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: A ‘new’ princely offer

Friday, March 1, 2002 | 10:06 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

BIG DEAL! Saudi Arabia has a spectacular new peace plan for the Middle East. Their "new" plan for peace is to have the Israelis withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. That's the year several Arab Countries tried to take Israel to the cleaners and lost their own shirts.

At the start of the 1967 Arab-Israel war, Egypt's Nasser called up Jordan's King Hussein and told him that almost all of Israel's air force had been destroyed and that his own troops had entered Israel through the Negev Desert. This encouraged Hussein to jump on what he was convinced was a crippled Israel. Jordan's army was driven from East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel wasn't as crippled as Nasser had led him to believe.

For 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, the Jordanian army had held this territory. During those years, Jews were not allowed to pray at the Western Wall of the Second Temple, which is better known as the Wailing Wall. The Arab soldiers desecrated the Jewish burial ground and used it as a toilet and a place for troops and their animals to gather. That's the Middle East the Saudis and every other Arab country wants us to support as a peace offering.

As a Catholic, I have found the safety offered by the Israelis when visiting the Old City is most comforting. Attending services at the Holy Sepulchre is always a special experience. Until this latest Palestinian intifada, the same sense of security was experienced when visiting Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ. Today, not even Arab Christians can feel secure if they live or own property in Palestinian Authority-controlled Bethlehem.

Reports coming from Israel tell us that Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are in support of the Saudi offering. I can't blame them, what they couldn't keep or get back by force will be handed to them. This must result in long negotiations and modifications before the Saudi idea, put forth by Crown Prince Abdullah, can be accepted by any Jew with a sense of recent history. Like any proposal it's worthy of open discussion because in the long run there may be an opportunity for peace.

The big problem for Arafat with his Islamic Jihad and Hamas is to turn off the hate they have fomented and taught two generations. They can't and don't want to turn down the flames unless it gives them an opportunity to regroup for another assault. Their end goal is to eventually drive the Jews into the sea.

Western leaders and politicians by now should have learned the true goal of several Arab countries. So how do you appease them and try to reach a just peace for all concerned? One thing for certain is that saving them from destruction won't help. A good example of this showed in a recent poll of Kuwaitis when asked about our country that saved them from Saddam Hussein's troops. Now 36 percent of that little country's population believes that the slaughter of more than 3,000 innocent Americans was "morally justifiable." That's on the hatred side, but on the stupid side 89 percent say that Arabs weren't involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Despite all of the problems and false starts and stops of other attempts to bring peace, it's a moral necessity for our nation and other Western countries to help seek a just peace. Maybe the Saudi proposal can be used as a framework for discussions and a step toward peace.

This will only be successful if several Arab nations, including Syria, Iraq and Iran stop arming and promoting terrorists as combined diplomatic and military tools. It would also help if Saudi Arabia would quit funding the Al Qaeda-infested religious schools around the world.