Excerpts: Egypt-Iran improving economic relations, Egypt downplays Israel
purchase of US planes. No PLO acceptance of Israeli existence. Recognition
of Israel by Palestinians October 14, 2010

+++SOURCE: Egypt Daily News 14 Oct,'10:"Iran exports first petrochemicals to
Egypt"

SUBJECT: Iran-Egypt improving economic relations
QUOTE: "Iran and Egypt still have not restored full-fledged diplomatic ties"

FULL TEXT: Tehran--An Iranian official has said that Tehran has exported its
petrochemicals to Egypt, a country with which it has still not restored
diplomatic ties broken more than 30 years ago.
"The first shipment of 25,000 tons of petrochemicals was sent to Egypt,"
Iran's Mehr news agency quoted Reza Hamzelou, director of Petrochemicals
Commercial Co, which sells petrochemicals at home and abroad, as saying on
Wednesday(12 Oct).
Announcement of the shipment, whose timing was not disclosed, comes a week
after the two countries resumed direct flights between Tehran and Cairo.
Iran and Egypt have still not restored full-fledged diplomatic ties broken
after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.
Iran "would increase its exports of petrochemical products to the Middle
East," Hamzelou said even as Tehran's vital oil, gas and petrochemical
industries are the target of Western sanctions.
So far, he said, Tehran has exported "4.3 billion dollars of petrochemical
products" in the Iranian year starting March 20, which is "an increase of 56
percent over the same period last year."
The previous year, Iran exported 6.5 billion dollars worth.
Hamzelou said the bulk of this year's exports, 41.5 percent, went to the Far
East. That was followed by 23.9 percent to the Middle East and 10.7 percent
to India.

+++SOURCE:Almasrayaloum via Egypt Daily News 14 Oct.'10:" Egypt air force
chief downplays importance of US F-35 sales to Israel", Dalia Othman

SUBJECT: Egypt downplays Israel purchase of US planes
FULL TEXT:Commander of the Egyptian Air Force Reda Mahmoud Hafez on
Wednesday(13 Oct) downplayed the military importance of a recent decision by
Washington to provide Israel with a number of US F-35 fighter jets and
dismissed fears that the move might alter the regional balance of power.
Last week, Israel signed a contract with the US for the purchase of 20 F-35
fighter jets as part of what US officials described as an incentive package
for the self-proclaimed Jewish state to move ahead with sputtering peace
talks with the Palestinian Authority.
"We're not alarmed by certain countries of the region that are eager to
possess modern fighter planes," Hafez told the official Middle East News
Agency in reference to the deal. "The Egyptian Air Force and the country's
air-defense systems are working hand-in-hand to protect Egypt's skies."
"We are modernizing our military capacities to provide appropriate means of
combating hostilities," the commander added. "But we aren't interested in
entering into an arms race with anyone."
The sale of the US-made Joint Strike Fighters, which will provide Israel
with more sophisticated combat aircraft than any other nation in the Middle
East, comes amid rising tension between the US and Israel and Iran. The deal
also comes in the wake of a major US arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

+++SOURCE:Jordan Times 14 Oct.'10: PLO wants a map from US with future
Israeli borders"

SUBJECT: No PLO accertance of Israel's exitence
RAMALLAH (Reuters) - The Palestinians are seeking a map from the United
States showing where Israel sees its final borders and making clear whether
they include Palestinian land and homes, an official said on Wednesday !3
Oct..

Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official Yasser Abed Rabbo was
responding to a US call for the Palestinians to present their own ideas in
response to an Israeli proposal that they recognise Israel as a Jewish state
in return for curbs on settlement building - a declaration they have long
opposed.

"What is required from the American administration and Israel is that they
present us with the map of the state of Israel that they want us to
recognise," Abed Rabbo told Reuters.

"Is this map on the 1967 borders or does it include Palestinian land and the
homes we live in?" he said, referring to the year when Israel captured the
West Bank and Gaza Strip in a Middle East war.

The settlement issue has derailed US-backed peace talks which began on
September 2.

The Palestinians say they will not resume US-backed negotiations until
Israel halts settlement building on occupied land where they aim to found a
state. An Israeli freeze on new home building in the occupied West Bank
expired on September 26.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would be willing
to request another freeze from his Cabinet if the Palestinians recognised
Israel as a Jewish state.

He said it would be a "trust-building step", while some Palestinian and
Israeli commentators questioned whether the proposal was only a ploy to try
to shift blame onto the Palestinians should the peace process collapse.

The Palestinians ruled out the idea - something they see as a major
concession that would be tantamount to political suicide for a leadership
whose credibility has already been badly damaged by the failure of past
peace talks.

US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Tuesday Netanyahu had
"offered his thoughts on both what he's willing to contribute to the
process, and what he thinks he needs for his people out of the process. We
would hope that the Palestinians would do the same thing".

The United States recognises Israel as a Jewish state, Crowley said.

Abed Rabbo's demand for a map echoed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas'
call for clear terms of reference for the peace talks.

Netanyahu's predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said he showed
Abbas a map offering him 93.5 to 93.7 per cent of the West Bank, with the
difference made up by a proposed land swap of 5.8 per cent and a
safe-passage corridor between the territory and the Gaza Strip.

But the Palestinians fear Netanyahu, who has not signed on publicly to
Olmert's blueprint, has no intention of allowing the establishment of a
viable state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem,
which Israel also occupied in 1967, as their capital.

Israel has said it intends to keep major settlement blocs in any future
agreement and, citing security concerns, Netanyahu has called for retention
of Israeli troops along the Jordan River, the likely eastern border of a
future Palestinian state.

"We are ready to recognise, once again, the state of Israel if Washington
gives us a map of the borders of that state so we know if they include our
land and homes in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem," Abed Rabbo
said.

The PLO recognised the state of Israel in 1993 at the outset of the peace
process. At the same time, Israel also recognised the PLO as the
representative of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinians say recognising Israel as a Jewish state would compromise
the rights of Arab citizens of Israel who make up 20 per cent of the
population.

It would also effectively forego the right of return of Palestinian refugees
who fled or were forced from their homes in Arab-Israeli wars to return to
territory that is now Israel. Their fate is one of the "final status" issues
in the talks.

+++SOURCE: New York Times 14 Oct.'10:"An End to Israel's invisibility",By
Michael B. Oren

SUBJECT: Recognition of Israel by Palestinians

QUOTE: recognition . . . would prove that the Palestinians are serios about
peace"
FULL TEXT:NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of
the Jewish people to independence in their homeland - and more than 62 years
since Israel's creation - the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish
nature of the state. "Israel can name itself whatever it wants," said the
Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the
newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the
Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Back
in 1948, opposition to the legitimacy of a Jewish state ignited a war. Today
it threatens peace.

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Erekat were responding to the call by the Israeli prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as
the nation-state of the Jewish people, enabling his government to consider
extending the moratorium on West Bank construction. "Such a step by the
Palestinian Authority would be a confidence-building measure," Mr. Netanyahu
explained, noting that Israel was not demanding recognition as a
prerequisite for direct talks. It would "open a new horizon of hope as well
as trust among broad parts of the Israeli public."

Why should it matter whether the Palestinians or any other people recognize
Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? Indeed, Israel never sought
similar acknowledgment in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Some
analysts have suggested that Mr. Netanyahu is merely making a tactical
demand that will block any chance for the peace they claim he does not
really want.

Affirmation of Israel's Jewishness, however, is the very foundation of
peace, its DNA. Just as Israel recognizes the existence of a Palestinian
people with an inalienable right to self-determination in its homeland, so,
too, must the Palestinians accede to the Jewish people's 3,000-year
connection to our homeland and our right to sovereignty there. This mutual
acceptance is essential if both peoples are to live side by side in two
states in genuine and lasting peace.

So why won't the Palestinians reciprocate? After all, the Jewish right to
statehood is a tenet of international law. The Balfour Declaration of 1917
called for the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" in the
land then known as Palestine and, in 1922, the League of Nations cited the
"historical connection of the Jewish people" to that country as "the grounds
for reconstituting their national home." In 1947, the United Nations
authorized the establishment of "an independent Jewish state," and recently,
while addressing the General Assembly, President Obama proclaimed Israel as
"the historic homeland of the Jewish people." Why, then, can't the
Palestinians simply say "Israel is the Jewish state"?

The reason, perhaps, is that so much of Palestinian identity as a people has
coalesced around denying that same status to Jews. "I will not allow it to
be written of me that I have ... confirmed the existence of the so-called
Temple beneath the Mount," Yasir Arafat told President Bill Clinton in 2000.

For Palestinians, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also means accepting
that the millions of them residing in Arab countries would be resettled
within a future Palestinian state and not within Israel, which their numbers
would transform into a Palestinian state in all but name. Reconciling with
the Jewish state means that the two-state solution is not a two-stage
solution leading, as many Palestinians hope, to Israel's dissolution.

Which is precisely why Israelis seek the basic reassurance that the
Palestinian Authority is ready to accept our state - to accept us. Israelis
need to know that further concessions would not render us more vulnerable to
terrorism and susceptible to unending demands. Though recognition of Israel
as the Jewish state would not shield us from further assaults or pressure,
it would prove that the Palestinians are serious about peace.

The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the refusal to
recognize Jews as a people, indigenous to the region and endowed with the
right to self-government. Criticism of Israeli policies often serves to
obscure this fact, and peace continues to elude us. By urging the
Palestinians to recognize us as their permanent and legitimate neighbors,
Prime Minister Netanyahu is pointing the way out of the current impasse: he
is identifying the only path to co-existence.

Michael B. Oren is Israel's ambassador to the United States.

==========
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA