US Looking To Trade Israel For Iraqi Stability In "Land For Iraq" Deal?

This story is about two weeks old (we came across it while doing some research for another story), but as near as we can tell the only JBlog to pick it up has been Israel Matzav. Is this the formal deal?

Moderate Arab governments plan to tell Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice they will help Washington stabilize Iraq if the U.S. takes more active steps to revive a broad peace initiative between Israel and its neighbors, Arab officials and media said Sunday. The deal, dubbed “Iraq for Land,” is expected to be proposed during a meeting between Rice and her counterparts from eight Arab countries in Kuwait on Tuesday. It echoes widespread Arab feelings that a lasting Middle East peace cannot be achieved as long as Israel doesn't reach a settlement to hand over lands it occupied during the 1967 Mideast war to the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.

What is it with these people's Israel obsession? Can't they think of anything else except the "Jewish cancer" in the Middle East? How could solving a Jewish-Arab conflict have anything to do with a Sunni-Shia conflict two countries over? These people are fighting over the results of a battle that occurred over a thousand years ago - it has absolutely nothing to do with Israel.

Though unbelievably stupid, it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility - the President himself has said that "there is no question that progress in the Israel-Palestinian conflict will improve the situation in Iraq". In a post-ISG political climate, the Administration seems more willing than ever to sell out one of their most important regional allies for the tiniest ray of hope in Iraq:

The monarch said a solution to the conflict should be based on the “Arab Peace Initiative,” which was unveiled at an Arab summit in Lebanon in 2002 and calls for Israel to withdraw from all territory occupied in 1967 in return for full recognition by Arab countries. In the U.S., a bipartisan panel on Iraq headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said in December that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute could help calm Iraq, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair says a resolution to the conflict is key to Mideast stability.

The Arab Peace Initiative, of course, calls for the Right of Return - the flooding of Israel by three million of the most violently anti-Semitic people on the planet, a de facto hostile invasion that would be the very real destruction of Israel.

Through last Friday, the US is at least standing firm on not embracing Hamas (despite Russian demands that the Quartet do so). But that was only because Hamas is basically at war with the US's golden haired child, oh-so-moderate Abbas. And the US certainly did commit to reviving land for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Which now sounds suspiciously like "land for Iraq".

Previously: State Department Helps To Define "fickle Support For Israel", Why "Humanitarian Aid" is a Myth (Or: the Definition of the Word Fungible), The State Department - Traitorous Incompetents or Incompetent Traitors?