BEIRUT/GAZA STRIP, 27 March — Arab leaders gathered in Beirut yesterday for a summit beginning today that is likely to endorse a Saudi plan for Middle East peace as Israel threatened to carry out even “more aggressive action” in the Palestinian territories if the United States fails to broker a cease-fire with the Palestinians.
The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have all urged Israel not to prevent Arafat from traveling to Beirut.
But Israel said yesterday Arafat had not met its terms for lifting a travel ban enforced since early December and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak advised the Palestinian leader to stay at home for fear the Israelis would not let him back.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he could not lift a travel ban that has kept the Palestinian leader cooped up in the West Bank since early December. “Unfortunately the conditions are not yet ripe for Chairman Arafat's departure for Beirut,” Sharon told Israeli television. Sharon's statement is “a provocation”, a top aide to the Palestinian leader told AFP.
Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, will present his peace initiative at the Arab summit here today despite the absence of many Arab leaders, a Saudi source told Arab News.
“The crown prince will go ahead with the peace plan,” the official said scotching rumors that the plan would not be presented at the summit. The official, who requested anonymity, believed the summit leaders will unanimously support the Saudi peace initiative.
When asked why Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is not attending the conference, the official simply said: “We have no clues. It’s they who should give an explanation.”
Meanwhile, Adel Al-Jubair, adviser to Prince Abdullah, told Arab News that the new peace initiative had cornered the Israelis for the first time, “by the Arabs offering peace and the Israelis rejecting it with the whole world witnessing it.”
Also yesterday, Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail told Arab News that the OIC foreign ministers’ conference scheduled for June in Khartoum will adopt the crown prince’s peace plan to make it a pan-Islamic initiative.
In another development, discussions between the Palestinians and US envoy Anthony Zinni broke off yesterday without reaching an agreement on a compromise cease-fire deal, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.
He said the Palestinian side will not accept proposals that do not link security talks on the US-drafted Tenet truce plan to political discussions.
In Tel Aviv, a senior Israeli security source told AFP that if Zinni “fails and leaves the area in a few weeks, and the violence on the ground escalates, then I guess we will have to take more aggressive operational steps” in the territories.
The official, who requested that he not be named, indicated the action would be more forceful than the mass operations undertaken earlier this month, when the Jewish state mounted its biggest raids inside the Palestinian territories since 1967.
In Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he expected the summit to endorse the Saudi plan even in Arafat’s absence.
Asked about the significance of the Saudi plan, he said: “It means that Israel and the Arabs can live as neighbors.
Mubarak called the Saudi proposal a “last chance” for peace.
Meanwhile, the 22 members of the Arab League have agreed on a joint peace proposal to Israel just hours before they are due to open their summit conference today, according to unofficial reports.
Sources in Beirut said that, at Lebanon’s insistence, a clause had been added to the peace proposal stressing the right of return of the Palestinian refugees who fled in 1948 — something which Israel has repeatedly rejected.
It was also expected that Syria would succeed in pushing through its demand that the Arab economic boycott of Israel be reactivated.
Crown Prince Abdullah, the architect of the peace plan, arrived in Beirut yesterday to attend the summit.
The presidents of Yemen, Djibouti, Somalia and Tunisia, as well as several officials heading other Arab delegations, also arrived.
Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh, Somalia’s Abdulkassim Salat Hassan and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were all greeted at the airport by their Lebanese counterpart, Emile Lahoud.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whose country currently heads the EU, are all due at the summit.
The proposed Arab peace initiative that will be presented to the Arab summit will affirm that “peace is a strategic goal of all the Arab states”, according to the final draft which became available through informed sources yesterday.
The draft text calls on Israel to proclaim the same goal and declare its readiness to leave the occupied Arab land in accordance with UN resolutions 242 and 338, Security Council resolution 1397 and the land-for-peace principle.
It states that the Arab League council supports the Saudi plan, which calls for normal relations within the context of a comprehensive peace with the Jewish state and the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The Arab League council calls on Israel to pledge the following:
l To withdraw completely from the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including full withdrawal from the occupied parts of southern Lebanon to the June 4, 1967 lines.
l To search for an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees, in conformity with Resolution 194.
l To accept an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian lands occupied since June 4, 1967, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and with Jerusalem as its capital in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1397.
In return, the Arab states pledge the following:
l To consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over and to enter into a peace treaty with Israel.
l To achieve comprehensive peace for all the states of the region.
l To achieve normal relations within the context of comprehensive peace with Israel.
l The Arab League council calls on Israelis as a whole to accept the initiative to protect the prospects of peace and to avoid bloodshed so as to enable the Arab states and Israel to coexist and to provide for the coming generations a secure, stable and prosperous future.
It calls on the international community with all organizations and states to support the initiative.
In another development, gunmen shot dead two members of an international observer group as they drove on a West Bank road last night, the Israeli army said.
