The eminent communication scholar Kenneth Burke was fond of insisting that in order for a narrative to make sense, its premise must be plausible and its storyline and characters must resonate for the readers. With this in mind, allow a simplification of the situation involving the Middle East, the Saudis, and their recent trial balloon of a peace offering to the Israelis. The connecting thread for Burke’s plausibility and resonance will be American football.

 Let us pretend that Team A is the leading team in the league. It has defeated the other teams and is headed toward the playoffs in fine shape. Team B, meanwhile, is the worst group in the league, and is going nowhere fast. Team C is a few games behind Team A and in desperate pursuit with time running out in the season.

Now let us pretend it is plausible that Team C approaches Team B with a plan and the two collaborate on said plan. The plan is for Team C, on the heels of Team A, to approach Team A, the league leader, to offer it a deal. Team A and Team B are set to play a game the next day, and Team C tells Team A that the deal is this: it has been arranged that Team B (the worst team, remember, with no chance of making the playoffs) will agree not to play its hardest against Team A. All Team A has to do is agree to sell half its stock to the rest of the league, and Team B will take it easy for tomorrow’s game. Upon their refusal, Team A is astounded to learn that the rest of the teams are castigating them for failing to see the inherent logic and fairness in the plan.

Lost? If not lost, are you at least indignant on behalf of Team A, which in this case is the Israelis? And are you at least cognizant of the fact that Team B is the Palestinians, and that Team C, the noble intermediary with the perfect anecdote for Middle East violence, is Saudi Arabia? Maybe you’re not a football fan.

EXPLANATION OF THE ABSURD

 The bottom line is that the Saudis, never known as anything less than the original Janus-faced and stereotypically crafty Arab traders, have volunteered after 54 years on the sidelines to broker a deal for peace in the Middle East. This, just as Hell is freezing over, of course.

 Another hard and fast fact is that the plan the Saudis have introduced is nothing more than a hash rearranged from past failed culinary (and often poisonous) offerings from past suppers. There is nothing in the plan which should interest the Israelis, except for the pleasant novelty of seeing the al-Saud royal family down to its last poker chips. It is a fact that the population of Saudi Arabia has grown from seven million in 1980 to almost 20 million today. The per capita oil income the country once enjoyed in a seemingly endless boom, has gone the other way, dropping from $19,000 to $7,300. Underemployed, under extreme fire from the United States, and facing a rising tide of fundamentalism which threatens to render it no more legitimate than Libya or Iraq, the Saudis, forever opportunistic, have actually been able to read the writing on the wall.

 But the problem is they have nothing to give the Israelis but a good chuckle at such desperate hubris and transparent chicanery.

 Here is the offer to Israel:

1. Full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations

2. Normalized trade with the same august body

3. Some nebulous something called “security guarantees”

 All the Israelis have to do to receive these plums is to withdraw to their pre-1967 borders, ceding east Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Take these gifts one at a time.

 1. Full diplomatic relations with the Arab nations.

The 22-nation Arab League meets March 27-28 in Beirut, presumably to congratulate themselves on their magnanimous proposal and to get along well, something they have managed never to accomplish in the long and ignoble history of that laughable, supposed organization.

Let us say for the sake of argument that this were to happen, that the 22 nations were able to forget about a lifetime of bitter, primitive, internecine warfare and become as one. Is there any dupe out there who believes that Saddam Hussein is going to pursue diplomatic relations with a sworn enemy? He won’t even feed his people or allow them to vote. Is there any hyper-optimist who believes that the Syrians, who massacred 20,000 of their own people at the ill-fated city of Hama in 1981 after an attempted coup, will do the same? Neither country ever signed a peace treaty or even an armistice after being soundly thrashed by the Israelis in war after war. And the Saudis have no room to talk, after they threatened yet another walkout last month at an international conference to discuss the restructuring of Afghanistan. The reason? Israel threatened to attend the conference. So much for newfound yearning for diplomatic relations.

2. Normalized trade.

Without the godsend of oil, the Arab nations in question would be able to generate roughly the same volume of resources as a country called Finland. End of that story.

3. Security guarantees.

Even if by some miracle of accelerated evolution the Arab nations were to rise as one and finally begin acting like this was the 21^st century and not the 8^th, this would not even make a dent in the violence in the Middle East. This violence is not being perpetrated by Iraq, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and others, though it is certainly being funded by these wallflowers. The violence in the Middle East is not even being perpetrated in large part by the Palestinians, believe it or not. At least not by those among them who are approaching the outskirts of civilization at this late date.

The violence originates with terrorists groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Brotherhood. These are not governments, these are not organizations. They are skin to the  nameless, faceless party-crashing Neanderthals who erased the World Trade Center, 15 of whom were, well, Saudis. Even if the Arab League were to send hundreds of representatives to Shabbat services in Tel Aviv with the purpose of becoming cantors, it would make no difference.

Giving the Palestinians a state including Judea and Samaria will do nothing but move the enemy closer to the gate, because the terrorists floating among the Palestinians like parasites will become citizens of a nation whose border is no more than three miles from Ben-Gurion Airport. Two-thirds of the Israeli population lives in the Coastal Plain, and they will be within rocket range of the new Palestinian state. The neck of the Israeli civilization will come that much closer to the noose, and the rope will be in the hands of a despicable band of marauders who see no diplomacy, no trade, and no problem with having cut the troublesome distance between themselves and the “cancer” they have sworn to Allah to eradicate.

TALLYING THE SCORECARD

 This is not to even to belabor the point that the grand Saudi plan includes the cession of east Jerusalem, in other words, the Holy Places, to the Palestinians.

There is, frankly, nothing in the plan that the Arabs have not tried to achieve by war and terror in the past. What would convince the Israelis to sign such a ridiculously one-sided plan when it would grant to its enemies the things they have clamored for three generations to avoid? Surely the Saudis are holding something back, no?

 Actually, they are banking on one thing, and that is fatigue. They are sure that the Israeli people are sick of the fighting, which they are. They are gambling that in their weary state of siege, the citizens of Israel will lean on old lion Ariel Sharon and his coalition government to stop the madness and give in.

Such a wish by the Saudis is as ahistorical as it is insulting, for it assumes that 2,000 years of waiting, 54 years of pain and suffering and military readiness have all been for naught. The American Jew, when he says “Never Again,” has the Holocaust on his mind. The Israeli, meanwhile, compartmentalized that tried and true slogan into two parts. One part involves the memory of 6 million people who were not alive to taste the fruits of the fabled return to Zion. But the more important part insists that “Never Again” refers to sovereignty, in that never again will any other people make the decisions for the Jews. It insists that after 2,000 years of exile, anti-semitism, persecution and denial, never again will they be at the behest of anyone but themselves. They fought for the right to make the same mistakes and successes that every other recognized, sovereign nation has always enjoyed, and they will not give that right back. Ever. Fatigue be damned. Remember the Holocaust.

Which brings us to the American part in this charade.

Colin Powell, who has proven himself to be more than willing to listen to reason from a reasonless voice, has signed on to the Saudi plan. Javier Solana, the foreign affairs chief of that bastion of prudent thinking, the European Union, has made an unscheduled trip to Riyadh to pander to the Saudis like the United Nations used to do.

If the Israelis are lucky, George W. Bush will continue his Trumanesque, pragmatic path of caution, instead of falling victim to the Clintonian disease of haste and legacy-building. Clinton’s unending posturing and intercession was a disaster to the Israelis, a fact that people have been slow to understand even as the smoke recedes from the mirror of that ignominious snake-oil sale known as the Clinton presidency.

The Americans are interested in stability in the Middle East in order to continue their jihad against the terrorist cloud people, and there is some relevance there, despite the recent exaggeration of rhetoric emanating from the White House. Unwilling to drill for oil in its own backyard, and unwilling to demand that the American people put the clamps of reason to their grotesque appetite for natural resources, the U.S. leadership is teetering on the edge of a monumental mistake. Previously unwilling even to admit that they favor the Israelis over the Palestinians for at least a half dozen defensible and logical reasons, the leadership is intent on finding a solution to a lifetime of chaotic enmity without being forced to call the proverbial spade by its rightful name.

 The truth is simple, and William Safire, as he has for 30 years, hit the nail on the head last week when he wrote that the Palestinian state is not dependent on American brokerage, but on the Palestinians defeating their enemies within. They are legion. One is the terror groups, without country, government, justification, or clue. But the other is more subtle, nuanced, and goes by the name of the House of al-Saud. The supposed “miracle in the desert” it promises so graciously is a sham, offering nothing but acquiescence and capitulation by a democratic nation victorious in war and diplomacy, in exchange for a cache of disasters it has valiantly fought off for decades.

 How can anyone, football fan or otherwise, fail to see that once again, as it has been in the past, the Emperor has no clothes?  Surely we can no longer claim any resonance or plausibility for that narrative. It is a farce and should be roundly hissed by the gallery before it is too late.

Dr. Gregory Selber 

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