Friday, November 21, 2008
Chicago Tribune
JERUSALEM — Reaching out to Israelis, Palestinian leaders placed Hebrew advertisements in Israeli newspapers Thursday promoting an Arab peace plan that promises normal relations in exchange for withdrawal from occupied lands.
Palestinian officials said the full-page ad was meant to educate ordinary Israelis about the six-year-old plan, which Israeli leaders say has positive elements and has been mentioned as a possible platform for peace negotiations.
“Fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel in return for a full peace agreement and an end to the occupation,” the ad says, under Palestinian and Israeli flags shown side by side.
The full text of what is known as the Arab peace initiative follows, with its promise of normal ties with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The plan calls for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, captured from Syria and a “just” and “agreed upon” solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees displaced in fighting after Israel was established in 1948.
The plan was adopted at an Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002.
Asked about the advertisement, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that although the Arab initiative was “positive,” its positions on final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinian refugees were not acceptable and had to be revised.
“The Arab world has to understand what I am saying now: You don’t put a peace plan on the table and say ‘take it or leave it,”’ Livni told reporters.
Livni, who is Israel’s chief negotiator in talks with the Palestinians and a contender for prime minister in Israeli elections in February, said that Israel first had to forge peace accords in bilateral negotiations with its Arab neighbors.
Along with the negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel has in recent months held indirect talks with Syria, mediated by Turkey.
In a separate development, Israeli and Jordanian officials confirmed reports that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak traveled secretly to Jordan on Tuesday to meet King Abdullah II, who cautioned them against a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the area.
The king warned the Israeli leaders that a military offensive in Gaza would threaten regional stability, the officials said.
A cease-fire between Israel and the militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has frayed this month, after Israeli raids that have killed more than a dozen gunmen and rocket attacks on southern Israel. Both sides have said they want to restore calm, but Israel has warned that it could take broader military action if the rocket fire persists.