According to the Times of London, Barack Obama is going to back the Mideast peace plan originally proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This plan gives all the land Israel captured in the 1967 war to the Palestinians (whoever that’s supposed to be; Hamas or Fatah?), gives back the Golan Heights to Syria, and gives East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as their state capital: Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal.

Does Israel get anything out of this? Well, yes; they won’t have to accept the so-called “right of return,” otherwise known as the demographic destruction of Israel.

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party. The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a senior Obama adviser.

Obama apparently has been convinced by his gaggle of mildly to extremely anti-Israel advisers that the best hope for change is to give a one-sided deal concocted by a rabidly anti-Israel, totalitarian religious monarchy another chance.

Putting aside the issue of whether any of the Arab players in this eternally-recycling “land for peace” shell game can be trusted to keep their side of any bargain, there’s always the possibility that the Palestinian side (whoever that is; Fatah? Hamas?) will manage to screw it up, either by making the “right of return” a deal-breaker or by committing some heinous act of mass murder.

UPDATE at 11/16/08 9:27:31 am:

It should be noted that one of the Times’ writers on this piece, Uzi Mahnaimi, has a rather checkered past: Uzi Mahnaimi and his lies about Israel.