Qaddafi’s got the right idea

Although Muammar el-Qaddafi has been on his best behavior for the last few years, Libya’s flamboyant “Golden Leader” hasn’t entirely lost his intransigent streak. And Condi Rice, currently traversing the Middle East for today and tomorrow’s Arab League summit in Riyadh, hardly needs more trouble: ‘Arab leaders should not attend the summit. They should stay at home – issues have already been decided ...

602985_isratine_05.jpg
602985_isratine_05.jpg

Although Muammar el-Qaddafi has been on his best behavior for the last few years, Libya's flamboyant "Golden Leader" hasn't entirely lost his intransigent streak. And Condi Rice, currently traversing the Middle East for today and tomorrow's Arab League summit in Riyadh, hardly needs more trouble:

Although Muammar el-Qaddafi has been on his best behavior for the last few years, Libya’s flamboyant “Golden Leader” hasn’t entirely lost his intransigent streak. And Condi Rice, currently traversing the Middle East for today and tomorrow’s Arab League summit in Riyadh, hardly needs more trouble:

‘Arab leaders should not attend the summit. They should stay at home – issues have already been decided from outside,’ [Qaddafi] said. The Libyan leader, who is boycotting the summit, said Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, ‘gives orders’ to Arab leaders.”

Qaddafi is apparently dissatisfied with the fact that Arab leaders are set to reaffirm a more conciliatory version of the 2002 Beirut agreement on Israel and consent to full normalization with Israel in exchange for a return to 1967 borders. Or perhaps the notorious Libyan rabble-rouser didn’t like the ground rules set by the Saudis for the meeting:

Long-winded speeches and spurious arguments will be frowned upon. Hammering on inconsequential disputes among Arab states will not be allowed.

(Most likely, it’s Qaddafi’s running feud with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah that’s kept him away.) While the Saudis have left some potential wiggle room via the Beirut agreement’s insistence on “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948,” Israel and the Arab states still have vastly different interpretations of what “a just solution” means, at least in public. The League will likely continue to push for the creation of a separate Palestinian state that partially includes East Jerusalem. For his part, Qaddafi instead favors the creation of a single state that he has dubbed “Isratine.”

The Golden Leader’s one-man boycott of the Riyadh summit will probably have as much of an impact on Palestinian-Israeli relations as the summit itself: little to none. Why is that? Because as former U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross explains in the Financial Times today, neither Abbas, who is now rapproached with Hamas, nor Olmert, who faces record low approval ratings, “has the strength nor the inclination” to make the requisite concessions. And so, Gump-like, Qaddafi seems to have stumbled upon the same depressing conclusion as one of the doyens of the Washington foreign-policy establishment. 

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