Saudi King Abdullah, Author of Peace Plan With Israel, Dies at 90
Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, the architect of a proposal that U.S. governments have suggested is the basis for a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace, has died.
Saudi media reported that Abdullah, 90, died late Thursday.
He is succeeded by the Crown Prince, Salman, his brother, who is 79.
Abdullah in 2002, when he was Saudi crown prince, proposed a peace plan that would grant Israel comprehensive peace in the Middle East in exchange for its withdrawal to 1967 lines, including from eastern Jerusalem.
It was soon adopted by the Arab League, and became known as the Arab peace initiative, although Abdullah’s imprimatur, as the crown prince and then from 2005 the king of a leading Sunni Arab state, lent it much of its heft.
It’s not yet clear what Salman’s position is on the peace plan, although in general his views hew close to those of Abdullah.
Under Abdullah, Israel also expanded its unofficial intelligence sharing with Saudi Arabia, particularly as Iran – seen as a threat both by Israel and Saudi Arabia — in recent years appeared to be getting closer to obtaining nuclear weapons capability.
Israeli governments at first rejected Abdullah’s peace plan, in part because it did not explicitly count out a right of return for Palestinian refugees, but in 2007 then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, at the behest of then-President George W. Bush, agreed that it would be a basis for peace talks. Those talks collapsed in late 2008.
The Obama administration has also cited the plan as a basis for peace talks and in recent years extracted an agreement from the Arab League to include land swaps as part of the predicate for comprehensive peace, a formula that would allow Israel to retain some of its West Bank settlements.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO