Playing Poker

It's now five months since the Saudi-negotiated peace between Hamas and Fatah. At the time I posted a cartoon called Palestinian Fairy Tale

Are the Arab regimes now crumbling in the face of Persion expansionism and the setting up of Iranian puppet clients in the region like Hamas and Hizbullah? Will the Saudis now back off and try to protect their butts by appeasing Hamas ...and dumping the idea of the Saudi brokered "Peace Plan" for Israel?

According to a Reuters report:

JERUSALEM, July 4 (Reuters) - "Israel believes an Arab peace initiative is on hold because of Saudi objections to Western efforts to isolate Hamas Islamists, officials said on Wednesday.

The 2002 plan promoted by Saudi Arabia and revived in March, offers Israel normal relations with Arab states in exchange for its withdrawal from all territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Although Israel has said it could never consider, on security and demographic grounds, a return of Palestinian refugees or a full pullout from the occupied West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pointed to what he termed positive aspects of the proposal.

The initiative "is on hold, nobody is advancing it," one of the Israeli officials said.

The officials said some Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia, opposed U.S.-supported efforts to isolate Hamas following its defeat of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group in Gaza last month.

An analysis circulated among Israeli Foreign Ministry officials and obtained by Reuters said Saudi Arabia "had distanced itself from direct involvement in the Palestinian issue". -more