Word: fahd
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Although Khaddam led the outcry against the Fahd plan at the meeting, he carefully avoided saying that Syria rejected the proposal outright. He made it clear that Assad's longstanding opposition to acceptance of Israel was more a matter of strategy. If the Arabs tacitly accepted Israel's existence, he argued, what incentive was there for Israel to return captured Arab lands or grant Palestinian self-determination? The Saudis' rebuttal was that a unified Arab position might have far-reaching effects on global public opinion, as it did in Rabat in 1974 when the leaders recognized...
...that he outraged King Hassan and other moderates. At one point, Khaddam announced that he was tired and hungry. Hassan turned and said that if he wanted a meal, an airplane was ready to take him back to Damascus. Finally, when Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Ati Obeidi declared the Fahd plan to be "outright treason," Hassan could stand no more. He gaveled the meeting to a close...
Radical Arabs were exultant at the outcome. Libya's Obeidi pronounced the Fahd plan "finished." In Egypt, meanwhile, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali declared that the collapse of the summit vindicated his country's Camp David agreements with Israel, and showed that Arab decisions made without consulting Egypt were doomed to failure (Egypt was suspended from Arab League deliberations in March 1979, after signing the Camp David accords). In Jerusalem, Israelis speculated that the position of P.L.O. Leader Arafat had been undermined. But among the 1.3 million Palestinians on the Israeli-occupied West Bank...
...Saudis were furious at the set back, but they will continue to pursue their peace initiative. Says P.L.O. Spokes man Mahmoud Labadi: "Prince Fahd and King Hassan were personally hurt, and I doubt if the plan will be brought up at an other summit, but it is not dead...
With the exception of Libya and South Yemen, the Arab states basically want a settlement with Israel along the lines of the Fahd plan. Moreover, some of the states depend on Saudi funds, as does the P.L.O. But a number of Arab governments are now put off by Israeli intransigence and the fact that the U.S. has not given firmer backing to the Fahd proposal...