AMMAN, 23 March 2007 — A dormant five-year-old Arab initiative for peace with Israel is a serious offer and will be the cornerstone of discussions at next week’s Arab summit, Jordan’s foreign minister said yesterday.
“The Arab initiative represents a constructive Arab position and a serious peace offer,” Abdel Ilah Khatib said, ahead of the March 28-29 summit to be hosted by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.
“It merits particular attention, and serious action for its application will be sought by all parties,” Khatib said, a day after accompanying Jordan’s King Abdallah to Riyadh for talks with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.
During their meeting the two kings agreed that the summit must “re-adopt” the initiative, which was first submitted by Saudi Arabia at an Arab summit in Beirut in 2002, an official said.
The proposal offers normalization of Arab ties with the Jewish state in exchange for its pullout from Arab lands and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The 2002 Beirut Declaration calls on Israel to withdraw from “occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line, and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon.” It also calls for a just solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was founded in 1948.
And it calls for an independent and sovereign state “on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital.”
In return, the Arab states would “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel and achieve peace for all states in the region.” They would also “establish normal relations with Israel within the framework of this comprehensive peace.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday his country is ready to make “big and painful” concessions to advance the peace process and that Arab initiative could be a starting point.
“Israel is ready to make big and painful concessions in order to encourage” peace negotiations, Olmert said in a speech to members of the kibbutz movement.
He said the Saudi initiative for comprehensive Middle East peace could form a “convenient basis” for future peace talks.
“The Saudi initiative is interesting and contains many parts I would be ready to accept... not all of them,” Olmert said.
“It could certainly form a convenient basis for future talks between us and moderate Arab elements,” he said. “I’ve said it several times recently and I still believe it.”
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Tuesday during a visit to Amman that the Riyadh summit expects Israel to make a serious peace offer. “We expect an offer, a position from Israel insofar as peace is concerned,” he said. “We fail to see any offer, any talk about serious peace.”
Meanwhile, Palestinians yesterday were dismayed by a decision by major world powers to keep in place a controversial aid boycott of Palestinians. The Middle East Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — reaffirmed Wednesday that the new coalition must renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals. Until then, the Quartet would maintain an embargo on direct aid to the Palestinian government, imposed a year ago when Hamas — considered a terror group in the West — formed a Cabinet alone after winning parliamentary elections.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said the Quartet statement “reflects an evolution of its positions, but this remains insufficient. We have to work immediately toward the application of the road map and the Arab peace initiative.”
Israel understandably was happy. “We cannot be but happy that the international community does not accept the program of the Palestinian government and continues to demand acceptance of the three conditions that it imposed,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.
