The LA Times has more details on the speech Saudi ambassador Fawzi Shubukshi gave to the UN Security Council yesterday, which many found surprising and disappointing. (Not me—it’s exactly what I expected.)

Before the ambassador’s address, which came near the end of the two-day council debate, the nascent Saudi initiative had been repeatedly praised by other diplomats here. Countries saluting Abdullah’s “interesting ideas” and “constructive proposals” included the United States, Japan, Canada, many European states and such leading developing nations as South Africa, Singapore and Mexico.

More important, the move was also strongly backed by Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab nations that have diplomatic relations with Israel. Tunisia and Morocco also welcomed it, though more cautiously.

But guess what?

In the much-anticipated address, the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations barely mentioned the initiative, other than to refer to the enthusiastic reception it has received from governments and commentators around the world.

Instead, he launched into a bitter attack on Israel that appeared to undermine the advertised premise of the much-touted Saudi plan. “No one can deny that what the Palestinian people are undergoing in the occupied territories is one of the worst forms of injustice inflicted by man, one of the worst examples of pressure and persecution and racism and systematic oppression in the history of mankind,” said Ambassador Fawzi Shubukshi.

“The objective of Israel was and remains the expulsion of the Arab people from Palestine,” he angrily declared.

You didn’t really think they were serious, did you?

And isn’t it interesting that the New York Times, one of the prime boosters of the Friedman/Saudi plan, devotes exactly zero column inches to this speech?