This is a guest post by Doug Lieb of the American Jewish Committee

Move over Tony Judt. Here comes the Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Today’s New York Times op-ed by Muammar Qaddafi doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, though it demonstrates some improvement over his prior works, which pronounce such truths as “sport is like praying, eating, and the feelings of coolness and warmth.” (Perhaps today’s alliance between the far left and radical Islam originates with his observation that “meat from mechanized poultry farms is not tasty.”)

He’s writing for the Paper of Record while wearing his ‘responsible person’ hat, so Qaddafi can’t maintain Libya’s official line about the “Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.” Instead, he makes a number of rhetorical concessions to “the Jews.” Some are banal - Abrahamic brotherly love, the history of persecution, etc. - but one is striking: the statement that “the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians.”

The Libyan leader asserts that fearful Palestinians fled the threat of violence in 1948, as is often the case in wartime. It was one tragic, unintentional refugee crisis among history’s many. But unlike all the others, this one demands the refugees’ total and unconditional return - not just to the country, but to the “homes their families left behind in 1948.” In brief, each Palestinian absolutely must reclaim the very house which no one kicked him out of.

Sweet deal! Even better than Palestinians could expect, given the history that Qaddafi recounts. So how to sell the one-state solution to “the Jews”? By recognizing that all of us have an undying attachment to “Samaria and Judea, part of [our] homeland,” of course. (All of us except this guy anyway.)

And the Qaddafi plan doesn’t just jive with the Bible. It also avoids “an unacceptable security threat to Israel” by preventing an armed Palestinian neighbor next to an Israel with “less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point.” (But Muammar, you forgot the part about missiles being fired at the airport.)

I’m sorry- has the Libyan flag just turned orange?

This is indeed a novel kind of peace proposal: one that bypasses the peacemakers and aims straight for the maximalists on both sides. The beneficent Qaddafi hereby satisfies the wildest dreams and loftiest aspirations of the Palestinians-and, no less, “the Jews.”

Thanks, Dear Leader and dear ghostwriter, for your concern. But no thanks.