SHOULD SAUDI KING ABDULLAH INVITE NETANYAHU TO RIYADH?
By Alan Hart The suggestion that he should was made by Thomas L. Friedman in his column for the New York Times on 7 September. My first response was to say to myself, “That proves Friedman doesn’t understand the complexities of the conflict and is at least a little bit bonkers.” But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that King Abdullah should do what Friedman suggested. In a moment I’ll get to what I think the Arabs and the Palestinians especially would have to gain without losing anything, but first here’s the essence what Friedman wrote. He noted that eight years have passed since the Arab peace initiative pushed by Abdullah when he was Crown Prince was presented to, and approved by, an Arab League summit in Beirut. (It offered a full and final peace, including the normalizing of relations between the entire Arab region and Israel, in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and a “just solution” to
