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From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen 
Subject: March 15 update 
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 12:32:28 -4)000 
March 15 2014 
Article 1. 
NYT 
Obama Has Made America Look Weak 
John McCain 
Article 2. 
The Guardian 
Let Georgia be a lesson for what will happen to Ukraine 
Mikheil Saakashvili 
Article 3. 
CNN 
Israel, Abbas face 5 realities on peace 
Aaron David Miller 
Article 4. 
Al-Ahram Weekly 
AIPAC and CPAC in town 
James Zogby 
Article 5. 
The Washington Institute 
Mahmoud Abbas and the 'Jewish State' 
Robert Satloff 
Article 6. 
The Financial Times 
Lunch with Prince Turki al-Faisal 
Edward Luce 
Article 7. 
Asharq Al Awsat 
Obama, the Bomb and the Fatwa 
Amir Taheri 
Aniclo I. 
NYT 
Obama Has Made America Look Weak 
John McCain 
March 14, 2014 -- Should Russia's invasion and looming annexation of 
Crimea be blamed on President Barack Obama? Of course not, just as it 
should not be blamed on NATO expansion, the Iraq war or Western 
interventions to stop mass atrocities in the Balkans and Libya. The blame 
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lies squarely with Vladimir V. Putin, an unreconstructed Russian 
imperialist and K.G.B. apparatchik. 
But in a broader sense, Crimea has exposed the disturbing lack of realism 
that has characterized our foreign policy under President Obama. It is this 
worldview, or lack of one, that must change. 
For five years, Americans have been told that "the tide of war is receding," 
that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and 
values. This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to 
people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative. 
That is how Mr. Putin viewed the "reset" policy. United States missile 
defense plans were scaled back. Allies in Eastern Europe and Georgia were 
undercut. NATO enlargement was tabled. A new strategic arms reduction 
treaty required significant cuts by America, but not Russia. Mr. Putin gave 
little. Mr. Obama promised "more flexibility." 
Mr. Putin also saw a lack of resolve in President Obama's actions beyond 
Europe. In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven 
more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed. Defense budgets have been 
slashed based on hope, not strategy. Iran and China have bullied America's 
allies at no discernible cost. Perhaps worst of all, Bashar al-Assad crossed 
President Obama's "red line" by using chemical weapons in Syria, and 
nothing happened to him. 
For Mr. Putin, vacillation invites aggression. His world is a brutish, cynical 
place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries 
are zero-sum. He sees the fall of the Soviet Union as the "greatest 
geopolitical catastrophe of the century." He does not accept that Russia's 
neighbors, least of all Ukraine, are independent countries. To him, they are 
Russia's "near abroad" and must be brought back under Moscow's 
dominion by any means necessary. 
What is most troubling about Mr. Putin's aggression in Crimea is that it 
reflects a growing disregard for America's credibility in the world. That has 
emboldened other aggressive actors — from Chinese nationalists to Al 
Qaeda terrorists and Iranian theocrats. 
Crimea must be the place where President Obama recognizes this reality 
and begins to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader. 
This will require two different kinds of responses. 
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The first, and most urgent, is crisis management. We need to work with our 
allies to shore up Ukraine, reassure shaken friends in Eastern Europe and 
the Baltic States, show Mr. Putin a strong, united front, and prevent the 
crisis from getting worse. 
This does not mean military action against Russia. But it should mean 
sanctioning Russian officials, isolating Russia internationally, and 
increasing NATO's military presence and exercises on its eastern frontier. 
It should mean boycotting the Group of 8 summit meeting in Sochi and 
convening the Group of 7 elsewhere. It should also mean making every 
effort to support and resupply Ukrainian patriots, both soldiers and 
civilians, who are standing their ground in government facilities across 
Crimea. They refuse to accept the dismemberment of their country. So 
should we. 
Crimea may be falling under Russian control, but Ukraine has another 
chance for freedom, rule of law and a European future. To seize that 
opportunity, Ukrainian leaders must unify the nation and commit to reform, 
and the West must provide significant financial and other assistance. 
Bipartisan legislation now before Congress would contribute to this effort. 
More broadly, we must rearm ourselves morally and intellectually to 
prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin's world from befalling more of humanity. 
We may wish to believe, as President Obama has said, that we are not "in 
competition with Russia." But Mr. Putin believes Russia is in competition 
with us, and pretending otherwise is an unrealistic basis for a great nation's 
foreign policy. 
Three American presidents have sought to cooperate with Mr. Putin where 
our interests converge. What should be clear now, and should have been 
clear the last time he tore apart a country, is that our interests do not 
converge much. He will always insist on being our rival. 
The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear 
imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par 
with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime. And 
eventually, Russians will come for Mr. Putin in the same way and for the 
same reasons that Ukrainians came for Viktor F. Yanukovych. 
We must prepare for that day now. We should show the Russian people that 
we support their human rights by expanding the Magnitsky Act to impose 
more sanctions on those who abuse them. We should stop allowing their 
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country's most corrupt officials to park ill-gotten proceeds in Western 
economies. We should prove that countries like Ukraine, Georgia and 
Moldova have a future in the Euro-Atlantic community, and Russia can, 
too. 
We must do all we can to demonstrate that the tide of history is with 
Ukraine — that the political values of the West, and not those of an 
imperial kleptocracy, are the hope of all nations. If Ukraine can emerge 
from this crisis independent, prosperous and anchored firmly in Europe, 
how long before Russians begin to ask, "Why not us?" That would not just 
spell the end of Mr. Putin's imperial dreams; it would strip away the lies 
that sustain his rule over Russia itself. 
America's greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human 
progress. But hopes do not advance themselves, and the darkness that 
threatens them will not be checked by an America in denial about the world 
as it is. It requires realism, strength and leadership. If Crimea does not 
awaken us to this fact, I am afraid to think what will. 
John McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona. 
The Guardian 
Let Georgia be a lesson for what will happen 
to Ukraine 
Mikheil Saakashvili 
14 March 2014 -- Crimeans vote tomorrow in an illegal "referendum" 
which will lock them into Russia's embrace. After this vote, and 
the takeover by Russian troops of the southern Ukraine peninsula, Vladimir 
Putin will claim he has legal justification for further military build-up and 
direct armed attack. How do I know? Because of the many painful parallels 
and lessons from Georgia in 2008. 
The invasions of Ukraine and Georgia bear striking similarities, not only 
because the pattern of the invader stays the same, but also because the 
two countries share deep historic parallels. Today, when Putin and his 
cheerleaders in the west claim Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine — 
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as they justified Russia's aggression in Georgia on the pretext of protecting 
Russian citizens — they seem to ignore the facts. In eastern Ukraine, Stalin's 
regime killed 7 million  people in an artificially created famine called 
Golodomor in the 1930s, to replace a restive population with a more loyal 
one. In Crimea, they deported the indigenous Tatars, increasing the number 
of Russians instead, and even though some have made it back to their 
ancestral lands, they haven't regained the majority they enjoyed 
historically. 
By the same token, those who justify Russia's occupation of the Georgian 
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia stubbornly ignore the fact that 
largely due to direct Russian intervention, the ethnic Georgian majorities 
were cleansed from their homelands. 
Both Ukraine and Georgia aspired to join Nato, but the door was closed 
at the Bucharest summit of 2008. From Putin's point of view, this untied 
his hands to deal with two neighbours that had tried to free themselves 
from Russia's grip. Both countries have had democratic revolutions, which 
clearly created ideological problems for Putin, as he regards successful 
reforms in Georgia, and Ukraine's aspirations to achieve the same, as a 
direct threat to his own iron grip in Russia. 
There are many parallels, too, with how the conflicts started. For months 
prior to August 2008, "unidentified troops" masquerading as local 
insurgents grabbed more and more control over Georgia's separatist 
regions, and were getting into a growing number of shooting matches with 
local law enforcement. Russian tank columns started to move into Georgia 
to the point when, on 7 August 2008, the armed forces were compelled to 
respond. It was easier to start a hot war in Georgia as there was already a 
history of violent Russian-supported separatism, unlike Ukraine. 
Thankfully, we have not yet reached that point in Crimea. 
The difference between Ukraine and Georgia is the sheer size of the 
territory. In Georgia's case, if we had not responded then troops, which 
every impartial expert clearly identified as Russian special forces, could 
have easily reached our capital, Tbilisi, within 24 hours.We couldn't afford 
to wait. By our military response we managed to gain time, raise the 
stakes, and ultimately save our statehood and democracy. Having said that, 
I have no doubt that in Ukraine Russia's goal is the same as in Georgia.It is 
not limited to the restive regions, and I am fully convinced that Putin is as 
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eager to take over Kiev in 2014 as he was to take Tbilisi in 2008. The 
Crimea referendum is just an intermediary instrument to achieve this goal. 
In Georgia's case they called it a "new legal reality", Putin's version of 
gross violation of existing international law. 
If the west had reacted properly to Georgia, Ukraine would never have 
happened. The invasion of Georgia was the first time since the cold war 
that Russia had tried to revise existing internationally recognised borders. 
So the west's reaction was of disbelief, and then it sought to pin the blame 
on both sides. 
Soon after the Russo-Georgian war, on Germany's initiative, the EU 
created the Tagliavini Commision to study the origin of the conflict, which 
while not able to ignore the basic facts of Russia's actions enabled the EU 
to get back to business as usual with Russia. 
Looking back, this gave Putin the sense he could get away with a similar 
adventure closer to Europe's heartland, in a country whose population is 10 
times greater than Georgia's. Many in the west hope the Ukraine crisis will 
fade away to business as usual. But the cycles of appeasement usually get 
shorter with geometric progression. It took Putin only five years after 
Georgia to strike again. The longer he stays in power, the more his 
insecurity increases. He sees territorial conquest as a means of achieving 
political rejuvenation and longevity. With the Crimea "referendum" a new 
clock has started to tick. The longer the west's wishful thinking lasts, the 
bigger this problem will become. 
Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian politician and was the third President of 
Georgia for two consecutive terms from 25 January 2004 to 17 November 
2013. He is the founder and leader of the United National Movement 
Party. 
Anick 3. 
CNN 
Israel, Abbas face 5 realities on peace 
Aaron David Miller 
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March 14, 2014 -- Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President who will sit 
with U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday to discuss the state—and 
the fate--of Secretary of State John Kerry's peace process is a good man 
and most likely the best partner for peace negotiations that Washington, 
this Israeli government or any other is likely to have. He's rational, 
enlightened and a leader who eschews both violence and the dream that 
somehow, sometime, the armed struggle, or demography will deliver 
Palestinians their state. 
But there's only one pesky problem: Under current circumstances, he 
cannot deliver his side of a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel. 
Here's why. 
The Palestinian consensus 
Abbas is in a bind. He's trapped by traditional Palestinian negotiating 
positions and a narrative that is almost impossible to alter. These positions 
include: June 1967 borders with minor territorial adjustments, a capital in 
East Jerusalem, security arrangements that don't suck every bit of 
sovereignty out of Palestinian statehood, and an acceptable answer to the 
question of what to do about the volatile issue of "right of return." 
To diverge significantly from them would end his political viability and 
perhaps his life. Even the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat—whose 
power, authority and legitimacy conferred some discretion and flexibility--
wouldn't agree to anything short of this consensus. I once heard Arafat 
remark, at the Camp David Summit: You won't walk behind my coffin. 
And Abbas has little of Arafat's street cred. He is head of the Palestinian 
Authority, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive 
committee, but is master of none. 
Not enough urgency 
The idea that you could reconcile this Palestinian consensus with Benjamin 
Netanyahu's bottom lines-assuming you could identify them-- is 
fantastical. And his self-image is not to become the midwife or father of a 
Palestinian state based on Abbas' requirements or needs; it is to water them 
down with U.S. help. Even then the idea that he's prepared to yield to 
Abbas on borders or Jerusalem is highly improbable. 
The history of peacemaking on the Israeli side is, to be sure, a history of 
transformed hawks (see Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, 
Ehud Olmert). But Netanyahu is different, and circumstances have 
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changed. The region is in turmoil, and Iran is his real priority. There is 
neither enough pain nor prospect of gain for him to urgently make this 
deal. 
Divided Palestinians 
Hamas has been greatly weakened. The ouster of Egypt's Mohammed 
Morsy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's troubles and 
Hamas' need to distance itself from Syria have blocked its options. But, 
between Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinian national movement is still badly 
divided and resembles a kind of Palestinian Noah's Ark: There are two of 
everything: statelets, security services, patrons, constitutions and visions of 
what Palestine is and even where it is. 
The real problem is that any reconciliation of the two factions will likely 
further harden Palestinian positions, creating a "tradeoff": internal peace in 
the Palestinian ranks but more tension with Israel, and probably the United 
States, too. And yet, unless the Palestinians find a way to assume control 
over the forces of violence in Palestine -- in short, one authority and one 
gun -- it's hard to see how Israel, even if it could be persuaded to withdraw 
from the West Bank on paper, would ever do so in practice. 
The Obama administration understandably cannot deal with the Hamas 
issue now. Instead, it seems to subscribe to the "Field of Dreams" school of 
diplomacy: If you build it, they will come. According to this logic, an 
agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would leave an 
already weakened Hamas no choice but to put up or shut up. The only 
problem is that for that to work, the "it" that they build would have to be an 
agreement so compelling that the vast majority of Palestinians would rally 
around it. That's very hard to see now. 
No help from Obama 
The President would like to be a historic peacemaker. And he made clear in 
his 2012 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that he is very frustrated with 
Prime Minister Netanyahu. But to have a fight with this Israeli Prime 
Minister over the possibility of a long-shot Israeli-Palestinian deal doesn't 
add up. A productive fight with Israel that ends up producing a historic 
peace deal where everyone wins is one thing. But right now that deal is 
nowhere in sight. 
Indeed, right now Obama's priorities are Ukraine, Iran, preserving a 
domestic legacy and maintaining Democratic control of the Senate in the 
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upcoming midterm elections. He has little incentive or capacity to 
forcefully press Netanyahu for a deal. 
People may think that a second-term president freed from the need for re-
election is free to take a big gamble. But it has really never been the 
absence of political constraints as much as it is the presence of real 
opportunity that drives presidents. Obama doesn't want to fail. 
No cause for alarm? 
The odds of a conflict-ending agreement between Netanyahu and Abbas in 
which the core issues that drive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are resolved 
are slim to none. Think outcomes, not solutions. 
But this isn't a cause for despair. Kerry's relentlessness and skill in 
engaging the parties have created a process that will at least survive the 
U.S.-imposed April deadline for a peace deal and live at least until year's 
end. Nobody wants to be blamed for the demise of the Kerry process, and 
both Netanyahu and Abbas likely wonder--and worry about--what will 
happen if there is no process. 
Israel probably doesn't have a Plan B. And Abbas' fallback -- to go to the 
United Nations and rely on the international community and the Boycott, 
Divestment and Sanctions movement -- doesn't offer much promise 
without Washington pressuring Israel. 
And so Abbas' meeting at the White House will go well enough. The 
President deeply cares about the Palestinians and their cause. And while 
Abbas won't betray Palestinian positions for Obama's legacy, neither will 
he humiliate the President. Kerry may yet squeeze out enough from the two 
sides to produce a piece of paper. 
In any event, it won't be the Palestinians who spoil the party. President 
Abbas will almost certainly tell the President, paper or not, deadline be 
damned, let us continue the important work of Israeli-Palestinian 
peacemaking. Peace may not be around the corner, but more negotiations 
almost certainly are. 
Aaron David Miller is vice president for new initiatives and a distinguished 
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 
Article 4. 
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Al-Abram Weekly 
AIPAC  and  CPAC in t
James Zogby 
13 March, 2014 -- This past week, Washington hosted two of my least 
favourite annual events. 
It began with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 
bringing their faithful to town to lobby for whatever the government of 
Israel might want at this particular moment. At week's end, the 
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was in Washington 
rallying their crowd to bash the president and defend their "true 
conservative" principles. 
During the past year, several commentators have, on occasion, pronounced 
both groups weakened and wounded, possibly fatally so. Conservatives 
were seen to be cannibalising themselves, while AIPAC was reeling from 
having picked and lost two separate fights with President Barack Obama: 
Syria and Iran sanctions. Based on the size and enthusiasm of their 
respective crowds and from the "red meat" thrown out by major speakers, 
neither group appeared to be in their death throes, but looks can be 
deceiving. 
AIPAC is far from defeated. They still define the playing field and roles of 
engagement for most Middle East issues. Their operatives are well placed 
in Washington and their influence is real. Three years ago, they and Israeli 
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took on the US administration over 
whether or not the 1967 borders should be the basis for a lasting peace 
between Israelis and Palestinians, and they won. AIPAC's allies in 
Congress turned out en masse to give the Israeli prime minister multiple 
standing ovations as he scolded the president and rejected his terms for 
peace. 
This year was different. AIPAC hoped its lobbying might to work to push 
the White House to attack Syria. They lost. Then, after President Obama 
launched negotiations with Iran in an effort to limit their nuclear 
programme, AIPAC again challenged the White House, calling for new 
sanctions against Iran. The president fought back indicating that because 
such new legislation would have the effect of sabotaging the negotiations, 
he would veto any such effort. Once again, AIPAC lost. 
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As a fall back, AIPAC put everything it could think of into what it called 
the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act — a bill that would deepen the 
already too deep US ties with Israel in trade, technology, defence and 
intelligence sharing. When they threw in adding Israel to the "visa waiver" 
programme, it was a step too far. Arab Americans lobbied hard that it 
would be fundamentally wrong for the US to grant Israel this benefit when 
Israel regularly discriminates against Arab American who attempt to enter 
Israel or the occupied territories. In the end, AIPAC lost. The bill passed, 
but without the automatic "visa waiver" provision. 
If all that weren't enough, the "coup de grace" came the day before 
Netanyahu was to arrive at the White House to meet with the president. 
The Atlantic Magazine published a long interview with President Obama in 
which he alternately challenges, cautions, scolds, and warns Netanyahu 
about the need for Israel to make the right decisions to advance peace. 
There was no mention of all these setbacks at the AIPAC meeting. 
Administration officials came pledging their "unshakable" devotion to 
Israel. Senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, took aim at the 
administration for not loving Israel enough. Netanyahu, as always, was 
passionately spinning his webs of deceit. 
While listening to the speeches at the AIPAC meeting it might appear that 
nothing had changed, but it has. The group has suffered a few blows, and 
the most they have had to endure in a short period. They may not show it, 
but they feel it. 
As the week closed out, CPAC gathered to lay out their agenda and hear 
from conservative leaders — and those Republicans who may have strayed 
from the "true faith" and now need to burnish their conservative 
credentials. 
As in past years, the speeches at CPAC were focused on rage over all 
things Obama. There were funny lines, to be sure, but a lot of angry and 
mean-spirited attacks as well. Freshmen Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz 
were the crowd-pleasing "flavours of the year". Others like New Jersey 
Governor Chris Christie and Senator Marco Rubio were there. They were 
once held in high esteem but, after displaying some moderate tendencies, 
have fallen out of favour. Their appearances were designed to atone and 
receive the movement's blessing. 
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A highlight of the event is the CPAC's "straw poll", as delegates vote for 
the person they most want to be the party's standard-bearer. It has become 
a major media event. This year, Rand Paul won the straw poll by a 
significant margin. In second place was Ted Cruz. Between them, Paul and 
Cruz garnered almost one-half the votes. Christie and Rubio finished way 
back in fourth and fifth place. 
Aside from the energy and enthusiasm of the weekend, conservatives have 
a real problem. Here's what they agree on: they don't like Obama and they 
don't like government. They control Congress and can block most anything 
the president puts forward, but their movement is divided and their leaders 
don't much like each other. In primary after primary, ultra-conservatives 
are challenging more mainstream GOP'ers, sometimes defeating them, 
sometimes weakening them, and other times forcing them to adopt policies 
that make them less electable. 
Conservatives also have come to realise that they have a demographic 
problem. The US electorate is dramatically changing. Black, Latino, and 
Asian voters are increasing with each election cycle. These groups vote for 
Democrats, as do significant majorities of young voters and educated 
women. Because conservative policies are so out of touch with the needs of 
these groups, the base of the conservative movement continues to shrink, 
further reducing the GOP's chances in national contests. Conservatives 
know they have these problems, but continue to blissfully ignore them. 
When listening to the fiery rhetoric and watching the enthusiasm at both 
AIPAC and CPAC, it becomes apparent that both groups retain the capacity 
to create problems for opponents. They may be down, but they are not out. 
The writer is president of the Arab American Institute. 
The Washington Institute 
Mahmoud Abbas and the 'Jewish State' 
Robert Satloff 
March 14, 2014 -- In refusing to recognize Israel as the "Jewish state," the 
Palestinian leader is denying a fact that even Arafat was willing to admit. 
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On my desk sits a replica of a tourist guide printed in 1924 by the Supreme 
Muslim Council of Jerusalem, the highest Muslim communal body in 
Palestine. Thousands of travelers to the Holy Land in the 1920s, 1930s, and 
1940s learned from this guide that Solomon's Temple, the holiest site in 
Judaism, was located on the site now occupied by the Haram al-Sharif, or 
"Noble Enclosure," which includes the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa 
Mosque. 
The fact that the head of the Supreme Muslim Council was Hajj Amin al-
Husseini, the Britain-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and father of 
Palestinian nationalism who later infamously collaborated with the Nazis, 
lent special credence to this statement of Muslim recognition of historic 
Jewish connection to Jerusalem. 
Flash forward to July 2000, when President Bill Clinton hosted a fateful 
peace summit at Camp David. In one critical encounter, Palestinian leader 
Yasir Arafat -- who effectively inherited the mantle of leadership from him 
-- rejected what his mentor had affirmed decades earlier. As Middle East 
peace envoy Dennis Ross later recalled, Arafat told Clinton that Solomon's 
Temple was never in Jerusalem. If any Jewish temple existed, Arafat 
suggested, it was in the West Bank town of Nablus. The summit collapsed 
in acrimony. Within weeks, Palestinians launched the Second Intifada, 
which cost thousands of lives and dealt prospects for peace a terrible blow. 
As President Barack Obama prepares to host Palestinian President 
Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Monday, amid a violent flare-up 
of tensions between Israel and Islamic extremists in Gaza, history may be 
poised to repeat itself. Once again, a Palestinian leader is taking an even 
more rejectionist position than his predecessor. Today's issue is the 
question of the "Jewish state." This is shorthand for Israel's demand that 
Palestinians specifically accept that the goal of current diplomacy is the 
mutual recognition of two independent, sovereign states -- Palestine, the 
nation-state of the Palestinian people, and Israel, the nation-state of the 
Jewish people. Abbas affirmed last week that he would flatly refuse such a 
formula: "No way," he said. The fact that he is, as Obama has said, the 
most moderate Palestinian leader Israel has ever dealt with only lends 
gravity to the fact that he has adopted such a hardline view. 
On the surface, it is difficult to understand what all the ruckus is about. 
Israel, of course, was built by Jews as a haven for Jews. The 1947 •. 
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resolution that gave international imprimatur to the partition of British-
mandated Palestine mentioned the phrase "Jewish state" dozens of times. 
Surveys over the last decade by respected Palestinian pollster Khalil 
Shikaki show that 40 to 52 percent of Palestinians would accept 
recognition of Israel as the "Jewish state" -- levels of support, it is 
important to note, achieved without Abbas's public endorsement. Even 
Arafat, the uber-nationalist, understood this. The same Arafat who rejected 
the idea of a historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem and orchestrated 
numerous terrorist attacks in his bitter fight against Israel accepted the 
contemporary reality that Israel -- whether he liked it or not -- was the 
"Jewish state." And he said so publicly, on at least three occasions. On 
Nov. 18, 1988, in the early days of the first Palestinian uprising, Arafat 
convened the Palestine National Council, the proto-parliament of the 
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to issue a declaration of 
independence. That document, a Palestinian hybrid of the American and 
Israeli declarations of independence, proclaimed the establishment of a 
Palestinian state based on the United Nations resolution "which partitioned 
Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state." This description was not simply 
a throwaway line, but rather the considered position of the Palestinian 
leadership at the time. On Dec. 8, 1988, the New York Times reported on a 
press conference Arafat held with several American peace activists. At the 
event, Arafat said: "We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish 
state of Israel." Sixteen years later, in an interview published on June 17, 
2004, Arafat reaffirmed his position. Asked by Israel's liberal daily 
newspaper Haaretz if he understood that "Israel has to keep being a Jewish 
state," the PLO leader replied, "Definitely." He later said to the interviewer 
that it was "clear and obvious" that the Palestine refugee problem needs to 
be resolved in a way that does not change the Jewish character of Israel 
through an influx of millions of returning Palestinians. 
Reasonably enough, Palestinians are asking today why Israel insists on 
them recognizing its status as the "Jewish state," when past Israeli leaders 
did not make this demand in peace talks with Egypt or Jordan. The reason 
is because conflicts with those countries were, by the time of peace talks, 
essentially territorial disputes, resolved through the equitable drawing of 
boundaries and the creation of mutually satisfactory security arrangements. 
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deeper -- it is existential. While many 
Palestinians suspect that Israel will forever deny them independence, deep 
in the minds of many Israelis is the idea that Palestinians have a long-term 
plan to destroy Israel. Formal recognition of Israel as the rightful national 
home of the Jewish people, which would exist side by side with the rightful 
national home of the Palestinian people, would go far toward calming such 
fears. The fact that Abbas still refuses to offer this recognition only 
deepens those fears. 
Perhaps Abbas's refusal is tactical -- an attempt to extract concessions from 
Israel in exchange for saying the same words Arafat uttered years ago. Or 
perhaps his refusal is as real and portentous as Arafat's refusal to accept a 
Jewish connection to Jerusalem. 
To his credit, Obama has understood the centrality of the "Jewish state" 
issue. Despite the pressure he has exerted on Israel to stop building in 
Jerusalem, release jailed terrorists, or make painful concessions in peace 
talks, the president has never wavered from his characterization of "the 
Jewish state of Israel." 
That position will be put to the test in Obama's meeting with Abbas on 
Monday. The president will face a choice: He can recite how even the 
iconic Arafat recognized Israel as the Jewish state, remind Abbas of the 
years lost and lives wasted since the last time a Palestinian leader took a 
harder line than his predecessor, and -- taking a page from his recent public 
warnings to Israel -- threaten Abbas with a dire future of isolation and 
irrelevance if he doesn't grab this opportunity for peace. Or alternatively, 
he could punt -- letting Abbas keep both the accolades of a moderate and 
the positions of a rejectionist. 
For a president confronted elsewhere by metaphors of the past -- Vladimir 
Putin as Adolf Hitler, the return of the Cold War -- how Obama deals with 
the "Jewish state" issue in his meeting with Abbas will determine whether, 
in the Israeli-Palestinian context, history is moving forward or once again 
moving backward. 
Robert Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute. 
Anicic 6 
The Financial Times 
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Lunch with Prince Turki al-Faisal 
Edward Luce 
March 14, 2014 -- The man who headed Saudi Arabia's intelligence service 
for 24 years talks to Edward Luce about equal rights for Saudi women, and 
which country has the best spies 
I have been waiting 20 minutes before Prince Turki al-Faisal arrives, 
looking flustered. "My driver had to drop me off five blocks away," he 
says apologetically. "All the streets are cordoned off." I tell him the 
brouhaha is for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who is in 
Washington, DC, for the week. The former head of Saudi intelligence 
laughs and says: "That's just another inconvenience that Netanyahu is 
causing." 
We have arranged to have lunch at the Occidental Grill & Seafood, a smart 
restaurant very near the White House. In addition to the roadblocks, there 
is a lot of snow outside. Turki, 69, is dressed in several layers and is 
wearing a dark trilby hat, which he entrusts to the coat check staff. 
I have requested a booth to minimise the noise. It helps but unfortunately 
not so much as to block out the restaurant's soundtrack of cheesy 1950s 
hits. 
Having been head of  Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate (GID) 
for 24 years — stepping down in 2001 just 10 days before the 9/11 attacks —
Turki is probably the most experienced spy on the planet. Since then he has 
been Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UK and Ireland and then to the 
United States. Now he runs a think-tank in Riyadh, the King Faisal Centre 
for Research and Islamic Studies, and travels the world giving lectures and 
meeting friends. It sounds like a nice life, I say. "For me it's heaven on 
earth," he replies. 
A scion of Saudi Arabia's royal family, the House of Saud, Turki is the 
youngest son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. Turki's 
brother, Saud al-Faisal, is foreign minister, and cousins and brothers 
dominate the upper echelons of the government. 
Turki is in town for several weeks to lecture at Georgetown University, 
which he attended as an undergraduate (leaving in 1968). Before that he 
was at Lawrenceville, a boarding school near Princeton. Washington must 
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feel like a second home to him, I observe. "Yes but I have plenty of second 
homes," he says. "There is London, Paris. I travel a lot. I meet people. I say 
what I want to say. I am having the time of my life — Alhamdulillah [praise 
be to Allah]." 
Since he first set foot here as a teenager almost 60 years ago, surely 
America must be first among equals of Turki's second homes, I suggest. 
He nods. We are interrupted by the waitress coming to take our order. Turki 
orders a house steak, medium cooked, and an endive salad. He is drinking 
iced tea. I choose the Maine lobster roll and a side salad.. drinking Diet 
Coke. Turki is keen to get back to his thoughts on America. 
"There are certain characteristics about Americans that I find constant," he 
says. "One of them is a tremendous curiosity about you. They want to 
know more about you — they ask about your family. It is a quality that 
brings you closer to them. They read up about you before. Nowadays it is 
on Google. That I found throughout my engagement with America, as a 
teenager, as a man of responsibility and now as a senior citizen. Americans 
are also very hospitable — they are always ready to host you in some form 
or another. These are constant qualities that I find very endearing." I 
wonder whether being a Saudi prince helps in this regard but say nothing. 
As our dishes arrive — both courses are put on the table at once — I ask what 
he thinks has changed in the US over the years. In between enthusiastic 
jabs at his steak, Turki speaks almost continuously. His demeanour is warm 
but I am struck by his piercing eyes. He clearly loves talking about 
America. "When I was here in the 1960s, LBJ was still president — he had 
it all. He did the Great Society, internal social reform, expansion of the 
welfare state, he also conducted a massive external war in Vietnam —
500,000 Americans were there," he says. But things have changed. 
America is now in an era of choices, yet it seems incapable of making 
them. "In Johnson's days when I was in college, he was very good at 
bringing in the Republicans to support him," says Turki. 
"Now there is polarisation — that sense of waywardness and distraction. 
Two extremes pulling American society and we don't have the centre 
pulling them back. The middle used to absorb — there were shock 
absorbers. It doesn't do that any more." 
How, I ask, do America's internal problems affect the Middle East? At the 
mention of his own corner of the world, Turki's pace slows measurably. He 
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reminds me that Barack Obama is about to make his first trip to Saudi 
Arabia since 2009. Back then the president was accused by US 
conservatives of "kowtowing" to the Saudi king after making a long bow. 
The atmosphere has since changed. Relations between Washington and 
Riyadh have rarely been worse. The al-Sauds got along famously with both 
Bushes but there is great mistrust of the Obama administration, particularly 
over its pursuit of nuclear talks with Iran, which Saudi Arabia sees as its 
arch-enemy. "Let's say that people are talking about the American retreat, 
particularly in the Middle East," Turki says. 
"For the Kingdom, it is a matter of putting our foot down, where in the past 
we did not. It is a matter of accepting reality. You have to acknowledge the 
world has changed. Obama's speech to the UN last September made it 
clear that America will be concentrating exclusively on Palestine and Iran, 
and for everywhere else — Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Mali, Iraq, Egypt, 
and so on — you will have to fend for yourself. So whether it is collecting 
your [Saudi Arabia's] own resources to do that, or reaching out to others in 
the area to help you overcome these challenges, we are adjusting to the 
reality of a retreating America." 
I am mindful that Turki remains a controversial figure in the west. In 2004, 
Paris Match was ordered to pay Prince Turki damages after the French 
magazine had accused him of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. The next 
year a US court ruled that he and other Saudis were immune from 
prosecution over 9/11 (although that is now under appeal). Turki has called 
al-Qaeda an "evil cult". But the fact that he stepped down just 10 days 
before the attacks was poor optics. Was 9/11 an intelligence failure, I ask? 
"Yes, across the board," he replies. "Now when you look back on it, 
signals should have been picked up that weren't, information that should 
have been shared wasn't — across the whole intelligence community. I 
know there is a lot of work being done to get away from those failures, not 
reading signs correctly, etc. That's the main reason there hasn't been the 
same spectacular events as happened in 2001. Not just in America but also 
in Saudi Arabia." 
Turki has by now polished off his steak. The greens to its side are left 
untouched. The waitress asks if he wants to see a dessert menu. After some 
debate he goes for the cheesecake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 
Buoyed by his example, I opt for the crème brillee. I get a double espresso 
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to go with it and Turki orders a regular coffee. I am curious to hear his 
assessment of America's intelligence capabilities today. I ask him to rank 
the best in the world in terms of data gathering, interpretation of data, and 
operations. Turki relishes the question. 
"In terms of raw data, definitely the Americans have it over everybody 
because of their technical and financial means," he says. "In terms of 
human resources, I would rate the British as having the most expert human 
capabilities on specific subjects — at that time [when he was head of Saudi 
intelligence], of course, it was the Soviet Union — the bane of everybody. 
To get a first-hand report from a British analyst always had that extra edge 
and knowledge that you felt comfortable in accepting as being 
authoritative. Probably in terms of operational capability and in terms of 
unleashing your capabilities, I would say the Israelis are the most 
professional, although they've committed lots of mistakes. But they do 
accomplish their missions." 
No mention of the Chinese? "That's what has changed the most since 
2001," he says. "I can only tell you that Chinese intelligence didn't loom 
large in those days." 
The cheesecake seems to have accelerated Turki's rate of words per 
minute. He is positively buzzing. You obviously love sweets, I blurt out 
suddenly — you're a typical Bedouin [the original desert nomads of the 
Arabian peninsula]. Turki looks puzzled at my observation and ignores it. I 
feel slightly embarrassed at having indulged a stereotype and then risk 
more by asking him whether he likes dates. Luckily this gets him back on 
track. "I love dates," he says. He mentions that his name, Turki, was given 
because he was the youngest of eight sons. It means the "unripened date 
that is left on the branch", which will be picked later in the season. "Yes, I 
love dates passionately. I eat them every day." Are you proud of having 
been born in [the holy city of ] Mecca, I ask, now in full conversational 
risk mode. "Well, it's a privilege, but not especially," he says. "It's fun to 
tell people that 
a Meccawi." 
Having drunk my coffee, I move back on to international affairs, asking 
what he thinks of Vladimir Putin's incursion into Crimea? ". 
reminded 
of children's stories," Turki says. "The wolf is attacking a pack [sic] of 
sheep. It is gobbling up one of them and going about its business eating 
and the rest of the sheep are bleating." At this point he mimics a sheep: 
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"Baaaaaa baaaaaaaa." There is a twinkle in his eye. "This is what is 
happening today. While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to 
come to the rescue of the pack. This is where we find ourselves today." 
But how should the west respond? I remind him that a few months ago he 
had criticised Obama for having set a red line on Syria's use of chemical 
weapons and then failed to act on it. The line then turns pink and 
eventually white, Turki had added. The Obama administration had reacted 
testily to his words. "If you are going to set a red line, you must act on the 
red line," Turki says now. "This is what Putin is very much a master of. He 
has kept quiet. You didn't hear him roaring, or boasting, or anything like 
that. He is quiet. The rest of the world is going baaaaaaaa. It's a terrible 
situation." But what can the world reasonably do? Turki smiles. "You're 
British, he says, "so you would remember the charge of the light brigade 
[the disastrous British cavalry charge against well-defended Russian forces 
during the Crimean war]." 
That having been settled, I turn the conversation to Saudi Arabia. Is Turki 
concerned that his country has such a poor reputation in the west, and 
particularly here in the US? I mention the ban on women drivers, among 
other things. "When I was ambassador talking to British, Irish and 
American audiences, I used to ask the question, `Who is the most prized 
woman in Saudi Arabia today?' And the answer is, `A woman with a job.' 
When I was growing up, the head of a family considered it shameful to ask 
his wife or daughter to get a job. He thought he should take care of his 
womenfolk. Because of education, the woman with a job became 
something of a prize and she brings in more income to her parents, she's 
looked up to by her siblings, and she's sought after by suitors." 
But she still isn't allowed to drive, I point out. He nods. "But what I hear 
from people in my entourage, the women in my family, is that driving is 
not that important. What is important to them is equal legal rights, whether 
it is inheritance, divorce, childcare, things that affect women's livelihood. 
They say let us concentrate on improving these things first and not expend 
our energy on driving, because that will come by itself." 
As the bill arrives, I tell him I have to head to a briefing on the latest 
Obama budget proposal. Turki laughs. "Is there any chance of that being 
passed?" he asks. No, I reply. "America is acting like a third world 
country," he replies. Then after a pause, he adds: "I watched the Oscars the 
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