ALGIERS, 23 March 2005 — Arab League delegates overcame initial hiccups and quickly got down to business yesterday after the start of the summit discussing peace with Israel while making it clear any road to peace must be a two-way street.
“Israel still imagines that rights will be forgotten ... (and) that the Arabs will normalize relations with it without any equivalent worth mentioning. It cannot happen without something real in return,” Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told the summit.
In his inaugural address, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the conference chairman, said Arabs must show the world their peaceful intentions to mobilize international public opinion against Israel’s intransigence.
“We must make the international community, the conscience of the world and the Jewish people themselves bear witness to the strategic nature of the Arab option for peace,” he said.
The president urged Israel to withdraw from all Arab territories it occupied after the 1967 war — one of the demands of the Arab peace plan — for normalization of ties. He stressed the Palestinians’ right to establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Moussa rejected accusations that Arabs would only produce terrorism and referred to Arab peace initiatives in the past years. His speech focused on global developments, including moves to change regimes by force.
“The Arab initiative and the Middle East road map are important to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of setting up two states coexisting peacefully side by side,” Bouteflika said.
The summit is likely to call on the UN Security Council to adopt the Arab initiative, presented by Crown Prince Abdullah and endorsed in 2002 at the Arab League summit, as the basis for peace. Jordan had presented proposals to make the Arab initiative more appealing to Israel by not insisting on the right of return and establishing Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, but summit leaders have reportedly rejected them.
Arab foreign ministers, in preparatory meetings on Saturday and Sunday, agreed to spell out the conditions in more detail, reducing the impact of the relaunch of the Arab plan.
Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said the Algiers meeting would not be “the summit of normalization.”
The Palestinian organization Hamas called on Arab countries not to rush into normalizing ties with the Jewish state despite Palestinian agreement last week to a conditional truce with Israel until at least year’s end.
“Nothing has been resolved yet,” a Hamas statement read. “The land is still occupied, and settlements are being expanded day by day... The racist (West Bank) wall is extending into the heart of Palestinian cities and villages.
“The occupation still... refuses to remove all settlements and rejects the right of return (of Palestinian refugees). Therefore, we expect Arab leaders meeting in Algiers not to open the doors to the enemy to enter our capitals.”
Bouteflika emphasized the importance of political and social reform in Arab countries, saying they would boost the welfare and prosperity of Arab people.
“I would like to point out here that we initiated this reform program some years ago on our own conviction and not because of any foreign pressure,” Bouteflika said of Algeria.
He emphasized Arabs’ total opposition to terrorism, whatever be its source or location. “Islam rejects extremism, violence and terrorism,” he said.
In his address, Moussa referred to the launch of the Arab Free Trade Zone with the participation of 18 countries. He called for greater efforts to enhance inter-Arab trade. “The Arab Common Market is no longer a dream but a goal that can be realized,” he said.
The Arab League secretary-general said the summit would take up a number of vital issues. It is expected to endorse the Arab family strategy and mechanisms to counter catastrophes. The establishment of the Arab Parliament, Arab Court of Justice and Arab Security and Peace Council and setting up of a council to follow up implementation of resolutions will also be addressed during the two-day deliberations.
Thirteen kings or presidents, from 22 Arab League members, took part in the opening ceremony at a beach complex west of the capital. Other countries sent high-level representatives.
The agenda for the meeting also includes structural changes to give the Arab League more clout and to bring parliamentarians and nongovernmental organizations into the system.
