make them an offer they can refuse

Prince Turki offers Israelis a peace deal if they withdraw from all Arab lands (the article doesn’t specify exactly what that means), and their reward is that they will then be considered “Arab Jews.”

Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan and signed a comprehensive peace, “one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity.”

“One can imagine not just economic, political and diplomatic relations between Arabs and Israelis but also issues of education, scientific research, combating mutual threats to the inhabitants of this vast geographic area,” he said.

Can one really imagine such a thing? If so, one must have quite an imagination! ***

As for the “Arab Jews” concept, I have a feeling it’s not going to go over so well. Yossi Alpher welcome the notion of a normalization of relations. However,

[he] said he hoped that once there was a comprehensive peace, Israel’s Arab neighbours would accept Israelis “as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland” and not as “Arab Jews” or “European Jews.”

I dunno. Something tells me they’d like to be known as Israelis, since that’s what they are. But what do I know?

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***On the other hand, it turns out the Saudis aren’t exactly lacking in imagination, as I learned in today’s New York Times. Apparently, they’re trying to give the Gulf Arabs a run for their money, with something called King Abdullah Economic City (seriously!):

Amid a forest of cranes, towers and beams rising from the desert, more than 38,000 workers from China, India, Turkey and beyond have been toiling for two years in unforgiving conditions — often in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees — to complete one of the world’s largest petrochemical plants in record time.

By the end of the year, this massive city of steel at the edge of the Red Sea will take its place as a cog of globalization: plastics produced here will be used to make televisions in Japan, cellphones in China and thousands of other products to be sold in the United States and Europe.