On Thursday, the PLO Negotiation Department took the unusual move of sponsoring an advertisement from the League of Arab Nations in the major Israeli media.

The ad proclaimed that “57 Arab and Islamic states will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel in exchange for a full peace agreement” if Israel will accept the League of Arab Nations’ initiative which mandates that Israeli accept U.N. Resolution 194 that would allow Arab refugees to return to villages that were lost in 1948 and also mandate that Israeli withdraw soldiers and civilians from all areas that Israel acquired after the 1967 war including the Old City of Jerusalem.

The League of Arab Nations’ ad ran as a full-page ad in both major Israeli daily newspapers, Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv, featuring the Israeli and Palestinian flags at the top of the page and surrounded by a border of flags of Arab and Islamic states.

The text of the advertisement presents the Saudi initiative in seven clauses in Hebrew, and concludes with a brief summary in Arabic. At the bottom of the page appear the logos of the Council of the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Conference. The ad was signed by the PLO Negotiation Department.

The significance of this ad is that the League of Arab Nations has remained in a state of full-scale war with Israel since the League of Arab Nations invaded the nascent Jewish state with seven Arab armies on the day of its birth on May 15, 1948, with the stated purpose of annihilating Israel.

The League of Arab Nations has never agreed to any armistice or peace treaty with Israel.
The same goes for the most influential member of the League of Arab Nations, Saudi Arabia, which has never signed any peace accord or armistice with Israel, unlike Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, all of which have peace treaties or armistice arrangements with the Jewish state.

It was the League of Arab States that founded the PLO in 1964 before the 1967 war, with the purpose of liberating all of Palestine. The PLO charter, which remains intact despite the Oslo process, also mandates the PLO to continue the war with Israel until all of Palestine is liberated. In that context, the PLO remains subservient to the League of Arab Nations.

Clause 10 of the charter of the League of Arab Nations, adopted in March 1945, defines Palestine as the sole nation that will occupy the land in between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

The Bulletin asked the spokesperson of the League of Arab Nations office in Washington as to whether it intends to change Clause 10 of its charter.
The answer was a terse “no.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com.

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.