PM seeks to upgrade diplomatic role of moderate Arab states
May. 7, 2009
HERB KEINON and AP , THE JERUSALEM POST
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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will travel to Egypt on Monday for his
first trip abroad since taking office, a symbolic move government officials
say is designed to signal the importance he places on relations with Cairo
and moderates in the Arab world.
That Netanyahu is visiting Egypt even before he goes to the US, where he
will travel on May 17, shows how important he feels the ties with Egypt are,
one government official said. Egyptian-Israeli relations were strained
earlier in the year by the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as foreign
minister.
The official said the meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm
e-Sheikh would also show the importance Israel attached to the involvement
of moderate Arab countries in the peace process, as well as in containing
Iran and its local proxies Hizbullah and Hamas.
Israel would like to see Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia play a greater role
in the peace process, as well as in pushing back against Iranian efforts to
make further inroads in the region, the official said.
Netanyahu believes that while the Iranian threat is a very serious
challenge, it also provides an opportunity because Iran does not just
threaten Israel, it is also a direct threat to the region, according to the
official. As such, the Iranian threat has created the possibility of
enhanced cooperation and dialogue between Israel and its neighbors,
"something that ultimately could be very significant in building peace."
National Security Council head Uzi Arad was reportedly in Egypt earlier in
the week preparing for the upcoming meeting.
Meanwhile, neither the Prime Minister's Office nor the Foreign Ministry had
any comment Wednesday on reports in the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds
al-Arabi that Arab leaders were formulating a new peace offer, more detailed
than the original Arab initiative from 2002, that would include a proposal
for resolving the two thorniest final-status issues: Jerusalem and the
refugee problem.
According to the report, which relied on Palestinian sources, the new
initiative was being led by Jordan's King Abdullah II at the behest of US
President Barack Obama.
The offer would reportedly call for the establishment of a demilitarized
Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and for the Old City to be
designated as an "international zone." The question of borders would be
resolved through land swaps.
The report said that some of the descendants of Palestinian refugees from
the War of Independence in 1947-49 would be allowed to move to the
Palestinian state, while others would be naturalized in their countries of
residence throughout the Arab world.
According to the report, the idea of a revised Arab peace plan emerged
during Abdullah's meeting with Obama in Washington last month. The US
president reportedly asked the Jordanian monarch to formulate a new offer
that would elucidate some of the issues that were vague in the original
peace initiative. Immediately upon returning to Amman, Abdullah took off for
Riyadh to begin hammering out the new plan with his Saudi counterpart.
According to the paper, Abdullah met with Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday and filled him in on the details. On Monday, he did
the same with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.
Palestinian sources quoted in the report said Obama had requested that the
plan outline a "timetable for normalization and the establishment of
diplomatic ties between Israel and the Arab world, which will encourage
Israel to employ the necessary means in order to create a demilitarized
Palestinian state."
The revised initiative, the sources said, "will allow the Israeli flag to
billow in all the capitals of the Arab world, while the Palestinian flag
will be raised in the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, which will be
the capital of the Palestinian state."
The UN banner will fly over the holy sites of Jerusalem's Old City, the
sources were quoted as saying.
The Palestinian sources said the new initiative conceded that an influx of
refugees and their descendants into Israel was broadly perceived as an
existential threat to the Jewish state. The refugees "cannot return to the
occupied Palestinian territories of 1948," they said, "for, according to the
Americans' point of view, this would pose a danger to Israel's future."
Abdullah, meanwhile, said in Berlin on Wednesday that Israel, Syria, Lebanon
and other Arab nations would sit down together to try to resolve the Middle
East conflict under a new "combined approach" currently under discussion
with the US.
"What we are discussing today is a combined approach of bringing together
Arabs, Europeans and the United States as a team to create the circumstances
over the next several months that allow Israelis and Palestinians to sit at
the table, but also with Lebanese, Syrians and Arab nations," Abdullah told
a news conference.
"So it is a packaged effort that we are going to work on... and I would
imagine that the plan will be more articulated by the president of the
United States after Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Washington," he
added.
Netanyahu is expected to meet with Obama on May 18, and by the end of the
month Obama is also expected to have met separately with Abbas and Mubarak.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu - following a meeting Wednesday night with Quartet
envoy Tony Blair - announced the establishment of a ministerial committee,
that he will head, to develop the Palestinian economy and improve the
quality of life in the PA.
The committee will be made up of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, and Silvan
Shalom, the minister for regional development and development of the Negev
and Galilee.
A statement put out by Netanyahu following the Blair meeting said he will
ask Shalom to start a number of economic projects in the near future in
Jenin, Jericho and a baptismal site on the Jordan River.
Blair also said on Wednesday that the Obama administration and international
negotiators were drafting a new strategy for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
and expected to unveil it within six weeks.
He did not provide any further details.
At a meeting later in the day with EU ambassadors in Israel, Blair said the
Quartet was not going to unveil any new plan, but was waiting to see how to
move the diplomatic process forward after Obama's meetings with the Middle
East leaders later this month.
The Quartet is scheduled to hold its next meeting in June, after Obama's
meetings with Netanyahu, Mubarak and Abbas, although representatives of the
Quartet may meet on the sidelines of a discussion scheduled for Monday in
the UN Security Council.
Arab diplomats, meanwhile, say the Obama administration is pressing them to
amend their 2002 peace initiative to make it more acceptable to Israel. The
plan - first proposed by Saudi Arabia - called for a complete withdrawal to
the pre-1967 lines, including in east Jerusalem and on the Golan Heights,
and a return of Palestinian refugees.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who traditionally takes a very
hard line on Israel, rejected that suggestion.
"There is no amendment to this initiative. We have received nothing from the
other side... no initiative, no response and no proper talking about peace,
so why should we change or amend, and for what reason?" he said.
Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki also denied the reports,
telling The Jerusalem Post, "I don't know where this idea came from. As far
as Egypt is concerned, the idea does not exist and is not under
consideration."
In a related development, Lieberman arrived in Prague on Wednesday for talks
with his outgoing Czech counterpart, Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country
presides over the European Union until June 30.
Lieberman, on his first foreign tour since taking office, arrived in the
Czech Republic from Italy and France, and is scheduled to go to Berlin on
Thursday, before returning home.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, with whom Lieberman also met on
Wednesday, said the European Union would only make a decision on a frozen
plan to upgrade ties with Israel when Jerusalem completed its review
regarding peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
During talks with Lieberman in Prague, Solana said that "not much has
advanced" and that Israel was well aware of the EU's stance, which calls for
a two-state solution.
"They are in the process of review," he told reporters. "They have to see
how they can make something that is compatible with that."
Brenda Gazzar contributed to this report from Cairo.
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