MIDEAST PEACE: 6.17.16 - Egypt, Jordan call on Israel to accept Saudi Initiative

Egypt, Jordan call on Israel to accept Saudi Initiative - Tovah Lazaroff -

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Egyptian-ambassador-makes-rare-public-appearance-in-Israel-urges-renewal-of-peace-efforts-456950

 

In his first public appearance in Israel, Hazem Khairat said that Egyptian government still believes that a two-state solution is plausible.

 

The Egyptian and Jordanian Ambassadors on Thursday called on Israel to accept the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, as the best path forward to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

"Egypt still believes that reaching a peace agreement is achievable," Egypt Ambassador to Israel Hazem Khairat said in a rare public address to the Israeli public which he delivered at the 2016 Herzliya Conference.

 

He pledged that his country would continue to work for a just peace that restores security to the region. This includes "activating the Arab Peace Initiative," Khairat said.

 

The Arab Peace Plan, also known as the Saudi Initiative, offers Israel normalized ties with the Arab world in exchange for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines and a solution to the Palestinian refugees.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the last month has called for a regional peace process based on a revised version of the initiative. He has said that those revisions should take into account the upheavals and changes to the region in the last 14 years, but has not laid out his vision of what those revisions should entail.

 

Israel has preferred a regional peace process, where it hopes that it would have more leverage than in the newly launched French initiative which it fears would simply dictate a resolution to the conflict that would be harmful to Israel.

 

But Khairat said his country thought both initiatives were important.

 

"Egypt welcomes the French initiative as contributing to the framework of international action" toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Khairat said and added that it has already "made a new step toward peace."

 

"Israelis and Palestinians should make peace because they must. The two state solution is the only way to end this conflict. There is not much time left and there is no other alternative," he said.

 

The absence of hope, contributed to regional instability, he said. It also feeds global and regional terrorism, Khairat said.

 

Jordan's Ambassador to Israel Walid Obeidat, who also shared the stage with him in Herzliya, also called for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on the Arab Peace Plan and spoke in support of the French initiative.

 

"The Arab Peace initiative stands as the master of all initiatives when we talk about regional approaches," Obeidat said.

 

The plan has the support of 58 Arab countries, Obeidat said.

 

"What more could Israel ask for than this?" Obeidat added.

 

Renewed interest in the Arab Peace Plan is a welcome development, he added.

 

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians is in Jordan's vital national interest, he said. Jordan will do its utmost to help the Israelis and Palestinians move forward," he said. 

 

PLO official Elias Zananiri told the Herzliya conference that part of the problem was Netanyahu's reluctance to make peace with the Palestinians. Now it wants to skip over the Palestinians all together in hopes of normalizing ties with the Arab world without resolving that primary conflict, Zananiri said.

 

Netanyahu has the capacity to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but he has to want to do so, Zananiri said.

 

"If [former prime minister] Menachem Begin could make peace, so can Netanyahu," Zananiri said.

 

Former head of the Quartet's Jerusalem Mission Robert Danin explained that both Israel and the Arab world had warmed to the plan over time.

 

When the Saudis first proposed it, they had their eye more on improving their ties with Washington post the September 11th 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

 

When the Arab League endorsed it, it did so "grudgingly," almost as if it was "a fax under the door," he said.

 

Since then, however, it "has endured and evolved."

 

This is not "a take it or leave it document," he said. It was also amended in 2013, to include the idea of land swaps in seeing the final borders of the two-state solution," he said.

 

On Wednesday, however, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger who spoke to the conference through a video hook up, said that the Arab Peace Plan was no longer viable in a regional climate where states like Syria, Iraq and Libya were disintegrating. It is impossible, therefore, to know who could be the partners for such a regional plan, he said.

 

In a media interview last week, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said he was not interested in amending the plan any further, thereby rejecting Netanyahu's offer.

 

But his words have not doused the drive among those who support the initiative from pushing to use it as a basis for a regional process.

 

A non-profit group, the Israeli Peace Initiative, showed a video at the panel with quotes from regional politicians who support the plan.

 

Former Saudi General Anwar Eshkl said "Saudi Arabia would like to live together, with Israel and the Arab countries."

 

He added, "I'm willing to defend peace with all my heart."

 

Netanyahu Warns Israel Will 'Never Accept' Palestinian State, End of Settlements -  http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160615/1041340333/netanyahu-israel-palestine-peace-settlements.html#ixzz4Bbet9pnr

 

The Israeli Prime Minister caved to hardliners in his own administration in renouncing his support for a peace plan that he initially boasted about.

 

Only two weeks after lauding the Arab Peace Initiative for its "positive elements" and calling it a basis for "constructive negotiations," Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu capitulated under pressure from his far-right government, saying on Tuesday that the country would "never accept" the initiative as a basis for peace talks with the Palestinians.

 

Netanyahu claimed that the deal contained, for him, both positive and negative elements. The "positive" elements, according to the Israeli leader, were the sections in which all Arab nations normalize ties with Israel. The "negative" part was expecting Israel to end its occupations, recognizing the existence of the Palestinian state.

 

The Israeli Prime Minister stepped away from peace negotiations after the country's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked stated, "As long as we are in the government, there will be no Palestinian state, there will be no settlement evacuations and we will not give any land to our enemies."

 

The UN special coordinator for the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov peace process declared one day later that Justice Minister Shaked was "killing hope" for peace, calling the comments by the official particularly distressing as they came, "a day after encouraging signs by the prime minister."

 

The influential Justice Minister called for genocide of Israel's Arab neighbors on July 1, 2014, via Facebook, saying, "the entire Palestinian people are the enemy, including its elderly and its women, it cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure," and that, "they are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads."

 

The Israeli official quickly deleted the posting, but only after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared her to Hitler, commenting that "if these words had been said by a Palestinian, the whole world would have denounced it."

 

Netanyahu faces pressure against coming to terms with the Palestinians from new hardline Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is on the record suggesting that the country engage in a nuclear strike on Palestinian occupied territories, and has said that he "will not support any peace deal that will allow the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel."

 

The Israeli Prime Minister appears to be a victim of his own hardline cabinet and changing domestic political realities in his country, but that has not stopped rancorous condemnation throughout the world for his sudden about-face on the Arab Peace Initiative, with many viewing it as a move to once again pull the rug out from under constructive discussion.

 

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault criticized Netanyahu, saying, "I know that I haven't persuaded you yet, but the train has already left the station," and pledging to continue with the peace initiative regardless of Jerusalem's objections. Israel now seeks a UN Security Council veto from the US to block the French plan.

 

 Next battle with Hamas will be the last - By Kobi Finkler - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213678#.V2F_g4-cE2y

 

A senior defense ministry source told defense reporters on Wednesday that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has no political legitimacy, and vowed that in the next war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza the Islamist terror group would be overthrown.

 

The official began with surprisingly harsh words for Israeli government policy. "We are weak in terms of policy, and strong in the military sphere," he told reporters from his office, under condition of anonymity.

 

"This reality needs to change."

 

"Abu Mazen isn't interested in progressing anywhere, or according to any (peace) process," he continued, referring to PA president Abbas. "That man doesn't have the public support or the strength to reach any arrangement or agreement,"

 

The official noted a recent poll carried out by the Shekaki Institute - the most reliable PA-based polling institute of its kind - which found that 65% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign.

 

Abbas hasn't visited major PA-controlled cities such as Shechem (Nablus) and Jenin at all over the last eight years, exhibiting his deep unpopularity beyond Ramallah. During that same period, the PA chief has visited European capitals such as London and Paris dozens of times.

 

He added that while the defense establishment sees Abbas - who presides over widespread incitement and corruption - as the main problem, Hamas is a close second.

 

"Hamas is a threat which ebbs and flows," the official said. "It's enough to see the schoolbooks in Gaza, the school curricula, and the incitement, to understand that we are dealing here with an organization which pours every investment into building military infrastructure against Israel."

 

The official also shot down talk of building a seaport in Gaza, floated both by some foreign leaders and members of the current Israeli government, who say improving economic life for regular Gazans is separate to Israel's struggle with Hamas.

 

"We won't allow the construction of a port or anything of the sort," he said. "The next battle between Israel and Hamas will be the last one. There won't be any Hamas government after that."

 

Turning to the north, the senior official said that while security assessments show Hezbollah is too tied up in Syria and elsewhere in the region to open up another front with Israel, the IDF is highly prepared for every eventuality.

 

He also addressed social challenges facing the army, calling for greater investment in aiding "lone soldiers", as well as non-Jewish minorities serving in the IDF.

 

Israel "must give its full attention to this sector (lone soldiers), as well as to those who enlist even though according to Jewish law they are not Jews," he insisted, calling for greater efforts to ease the conversion process for those who want "to see themselves as part of (Israeli) society."

 

Turning to the ongoing controversy over American military aid to Israel, the senior official called on both Israel and the US to reach an agreement "as fast as possible."

 

"We need to close the deal, and there is no room for time extensions."

 

On the subject of US defense aid, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is due to fly to America on Saturday night in order to help push an aid package deal, as well as to take part in the inaugural ceremony for the new F-35 jet.

 

Yesterday, the defense minister took action against a close aid of Mahmoud Abbas, stripping him off all diplomatic privileges in response to that PA official's efforts to incite terrorism against Israelis.

 

"A man like this, who engages for months in incitement against Israel and in subversive activities - including the establishment of a new Arab party - will not receive any further entry permits into Israeli territory," Liberman said in a statement.