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Saudi Prince Bandar Tells Palestinians: We Won't Cover for You Any Longer
(The Hill) Dennis Ross - In 2000, I briefed Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to America, on the Clinton parameters for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Bandar told me privately, "If Arafat rejects this, it won't be a mistake, it will be a crime." But no Arab officials were prepared to openly to criticize the Arafat decision or counter the Palestinian story misrepresenting what had been offered. Now, the Middle Eastern landscape is changing when it comes to the Palestinian cause. The fear that Palestinians could arouse opposition to Arab leaders by claiming they were betraying Palestinian national aspirations is gone. Last week Bandar bin Sultan told Al-Arabiya about the historic failures of the Palestinian leadership. His message to the Palestinians was: We won't cover for you any longer. The same logic motivated the United Arab Emirates to formalize peace with Israel now. In the end, Bandar will have done Palestinians a favor if he forces them to look in the mirror and realize it is time to choose correctly. The writer, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, is the counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.