In a recent speech, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has suggested reviving the long-moribund peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia in conjunction with other Arab states. That 2002 initiative, however, includes an unrestricted right of return to Israel for all 1948 Arab refugees as well as their descendants. Nor does it allow for adjustments of the pre-1967 lines to accommodate Israel’s security or the longstanding Jewish communities on the West Bank, even though such adjustments have been confirmed by UN resolution and in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But the real problem, writes Zalman Shoval, is the lack of interest in peace on the part of Palestinian leadership:

The way toward an independent Palestine for Arafat was a combination of cheating and violence—and for Abbas it is to play the UN card. Peace doesn’t come into it, certainly not if that were to be contingent on concessions on such items as refugees, Jerusalem, borders, etc. Thus for Abbas it isn’t “peace now,” but “state now”—with peace, whatever its contours, later or not at all.

If the Arab peace initiative had been presented, as Jordan’s esteemed foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, suggested at the time, as a straightforward “simple and powerful explanation of the Arab position” and not as an “either-or” dictate, it could perhaps have served as a suitable platform for meaningful negotiations. In its present form, it is not.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”