Middle EastArab League’s Mid East peace proposal accepts Israel’s position on borders

Arab League members take great step forward // Source: majalisna.com

In a major coup for the Obama administration, representatives of the Arab League announced Monday in Washington that they were reaffirming two earlier initiatives by the league to end the Arab-Israeli conflict – and made the current peace proposal even more acceptable to Israel.

This is the third time that the Arab League launches a regional peace initiative. The then-Crown Prince, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, first proposed a comprehensive peace plan in the March 2002 Beirut Summit of the Arab League. The 2002 proposal was re-endorsed at the March 2007 Riyadh Summit of the league.

“This is a positive announcement,” Israel Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told Israel’s Channel 10 TV. Livni is also the cabinet minister in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians. She added that the league’s proposal gave “tail wind” to peace efforts in the region. “At the end you need a direct negotiation between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Haaretznotes that the 2002 Arab peace initiative offered Israel peace not only with the Arab countries, but with the entire Muslim world, in exchange for a “complete withdrawal” from the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day war.

The 2002 initiative was revolutionary not only in that it offered Israel a normalization of relationship with the Arab and Muslim countries – but in that it was endorsed by the entire membership — twenty-two states — of the Arab League. Among members of the league in 2002 were Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya (note that Libya did not take part in the 2007 league meeting).

In addition to the twenty-two members of the Arab League, the 2002 and 2007 proposals were endorsed by the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The OIC is the umbrella organization of the world’s Muslim countries.

The Washington Post reports that in Washington Monday, Qatari prime minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani directly addressed some of Israel’s main concerns regarding the 2002 and 2007 Arab League proposals.

Sheik Hamad, representing the Arab League delegation, repeated the official position of the league that an agreement between Israel and a future Palestine should be based on the 1967 “green” lines (that is, the borders Israel had between the end of the 1948-49 War of Independence and the 1967 Six Day War). For the first time, however, he highlighted the possibility of “comparable,” mutually agreed and “minor” land swaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The Arab League has thus publicly accepted two of Israel’s most important conditions:

• First, that the 1967 borders were not defensible, and that any future border between Israel and Palestine will have to deviate from the 1967 lines in order to bolster Israel’s security
• Second, that much has happened on the ground in the forty-six years since the 1967 war, and that hundreds of thousands of Israelis now live in area east of the 1967 demarcation line. Israel’s position has been that about 80 percent of these settlers, concentrated in three settlement blocs, should be allowed to remain where they are. The good thing is that these three settlement blocks account for about 7-8 percent of the West Bank territory, and Israel has agreed to compensate the Palestinian states by giving it the exact same amount in what is now Israel.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry called the changed in the Arab League’s language a “very big step forward.”

“This is literally a statement by the Arab world that they’re prepared to make peace, providing the Palestinians and Israelis reach a final status agreement,” he told reporters Tuesday at the State Department after meeting Spain’s foreign minister.

“I don’t underestimate the significance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Arab Emirates, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and others coming to the table and saying, ‘We are prepared to make peace now in 2013,’” he said.

Kerry admitted, though, that much is yet to be done. “We have a lot of homework to do, a lot of tough hurdles to get over, but each step forward is the way you

get there,” Kerry said.

President Shimon Peres said the Arabs League’ decision provided a new chance to restart peace talks. “The ministers of the Arab League once again expressed their support for the two state solution, which is also accepted by us and a broad structure of support is being created for making progress,” he said during a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican.