AP News, March 29th, 2007
On the face of it, it's what the Jewish state has been yearning for ever since its founding nearly 60 years ago: full acceptance by its Arab neighbors.
So why has Israel been so measured in its response to an Arab initiative offering just that in exchange for land withdrawals? Because the concessions required would be far-reaching _ and Israel's embattled prime minister may lack the standing to push them through.
Still, Israeli officials spoke positively about Thursday's relaunching of a 2002 Arab peace initiative at a summit of Arab kings, emirs and presidents. The plan offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for Israeli withdrawal from the lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
"In general there's no question that the prime minister and government of the state of Israel see the Saudi initiative as interesting and as the possible basis for a dialogue. But that doesn't mean we accept it from A to Z," Israeli government spokesman Miri Eisin said.
Another Israeli spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government was still weighing a final response to the initiative, was less agreeable _ saying Israel was considering offering its own peace plan to counter the Arab one.
Two of the Arab initiative's provisions are particularly problematic for Israel: the call for a return to 1967 frontiers and for a "just solution" to the problem of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced out of lands in what is now Israel.
In any final peace deal, Israel plans to keep large West Bank settlement blocs, especially in the Jerusalem area, and it sees the influx of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants as the end of Israel as a Jewish homeland.
However, some Israelis see the Arab offer as a golden opportunity that should not be squandered with lukewarm nods of tentative approval. They say Arab backing could be just what is needed to make a deal with the Palestinians stick, with leading Muslim states underwriting what are sure to be excruciating compromises, like shared sovereignty over Jerusalem's holy sites.
Dovish Israeli lawmaker Yossi Beilin said the response of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "should and could be much more positive." Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit said Israel "should grab it with two hands" and urged Olmert to invite Arab leaders to Jerusalem or "go to Riyadh maybe."
Even if Israel and Arab states were to suddenly come together, however, major stumbling blocks would remain.
The people with whom Israel would actually have to make peace, the Palestinians, are ruled by a Hamas-led unity government that refuses to renounce violence or recognize Israel's right to exist _ major impediments to a meaningful peace process.
And Olmert finds himself weakened by low approval ratings, corruption scandals and an investigation into his conduct during last summer's Lebanon war, which most Israelis think he badly bungled.
There are notable precedents for Israeli land withdrawals, including its abandonment of the Sinai peninsula as part of a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and its unilateral 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip. But Olmert lacks the stature of the men behind those bold moves: Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.
Moderate Palestinians say Israel's concerns about borders and refugees should not be deal breakers.
The Arab plan doesn't demand the return of all refugees to Israel, but rather calls for a solution that the two sides could work out in negotiations, said Ghassan Khatib, an analyst and former Palestinian Cabinet minister. One possibility that has been raised is compensation for displaced people.
Khatib said Palestinians also could accept some modifications to the 1967 frontiers in a final peace deal, as long as they were compensated, presumably through land swaps.
"This is something Israel knows that the Palestinians and the Arabs have accepted," Khatib said.
Nevertheless, the reaction of Palestinian radicals to the summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were likely to stoke Israeli suspicions.
A Hamas memorandum urged summit participants to safeguard the Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and the right of refugees to return to Israel _ and warned them against "kneeling down before U.S. and Western pressure," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Nafez Azzam, a leader of the violent Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza, called the Riyadh meeting "the most dangerous summit in the history of Arab summits" and rejected any initiative that "gives legitimacy to Israel's existence."
Still, the presence at the summit of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas, could be interpreted as a sign of moderation.
Haniyeh raised no objections Thursday when moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah movement stood before the participants and declared that "the Palestinian people is sincere in extending its hand of peace to the Israeli people."
Israel rejected the Arab peace initiative when it was first offered in 2002. But that was during the height of the Palestinian uprising, when Israelis were under siege from suicide bombings.
Things have changed, and a confluence of events and interests may have made the time ripe for restarting peace talks. Israel and moderate Sunni Arab states find themselves sharing the same concern about the growing influence and nuclear ambitions of Shiite-dominated Iran.
Polls say most Israelis have come to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But many worry violent extremists would rule the state next door, a fear that may explain, in part, why the Arab initiative has been so coolly received by the Israeli public.
Dan Jacobson, a leader of the dovish Israeli group Peace Now, said one thing could break through that skepticism _ a visit to Israel by the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Egypt's president to present the peace plan.
"Such an appearance of these three leaders, before the people of Israel, would fill the public squares and create a momentum that no government could resist," he said.
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Steven Gutkin is The Associated Press bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories. AP correspondents Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub contributed to this report.
