The Arab League committee met this week in Cairo to bolster the 2002 Arab peace initiative, a job that is far from easy, reports Doaa El-Bey In a sign of solidarity, the Arab League committee of 13 foreign ministers met in Cairo this week to reiterate their support for the 2002 Arab peace initiative and set up several sub-committees to enhance it. The aim of the working groups or committees, as Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit put it earlier in the week, was to lay out the political formulations behind the Arab effort and explain the concept of land for peace. Yesterday's meeting came in the wake of the Riyadh summit which promoted the concept of peace in the Middle East and full Arab recognition of Israel in return for Israel evacuating occupied Palestinian land and withdrawing to the 1967 borders. The committee, which was established after the 2002 Lebanon summit, has held nine meetings since then. But this meeting, according to a diplomat who attended the meeting and talked to Al-Ahram Weekly, on condition of anonymity, built upon the wider interests of the initiative, the recommendations of the Riyadh summit and the Israeli declaration that it wants to begin dialogue with the Arab states. "Israel wants to hold negotiations with the Gulf and Maghreb states without committing itself to the initiative. But the initiative is clear, it sets certain conditions on which the Arab states would normalise their relations with Israel," the diplomat added. The initiative was met with outright rejection from Israel five years ago. But after the Arab states renewed their commitment to the initiative in Riyadh last month, Olmert said his country was ready to make "big and painful" concessions to advance the peace process. First adopted by the Arab League during the 2002 summit, the initiative called for "full Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territory occupied since June 1967 in accordance with implementation of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338". Israel's "acceptance of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital" and finding a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194" and in return all the Arab states would establish normal relations with Israel. The adherence of the Arab states to the initiative and the setting up of the working groups to promote it serves two purposes. First it shows the Arabs as the party who is seeking peace with Israel and provides an initiative for peace that the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat described as the most important peace initiative since Israel occupied Palestinian land in 1948. In addition, it ruled out any more concessions on the Arab side and put the ball in the Israeli court. Mohamed Bassiouni, former Egyptian ambassador to Israel and currently head of the Arab, Foreign and National Defence Committee of the Shura Council, said the Arabs could not make any more concessions. "Any Israeli claims that we are not flexible would appear unfounded now. Besides accepting the establishment of normal relations with Israel, once it agrees to the conditions outlined in the Arab initiative, we support the implementation of UN Resolution 242 which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on 22 per cent of historic Palestine only," he said. Secondly, a unified Arab stance on the initiative without any amendments could pressure Israel into accepting it. The more unified the Arabs are, according to Bassiouni, the stronger our negotiating position is. However, promoting the initiative and convincing Israel to accept it is not going to be easy. Israel regarded the Riyadh summit as another chance to procrastinate and tried to establish relations with the Arab states while attempting to avoid making any concessions as was so clearly outlined in statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently. Three days before the Arab League committee meeting, Olmert said Israel was ready to talk to any number of Arab states in order to hear their ideas on the Arab initiative. The call came ahead of his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas aimed at finding ways to revive the peace process. The meeting in Jerusalem was the first in a series of fortnightly talks they agreed on during a visit last month by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier this month, Olmert said that if the Saudi king initiated a meeting of moderate Arab states and invited himself and Abbas, he would be glad to come to hear their ideas and voice his. Olmert's call for that meeting came during a news conference in Jerusalem with the visiting German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Some diplomats suggested that Olmert was turning to the peace process in order to divert attention away from criticism over last summer's war against Hizbullah in Lebanon and a string of internal corruption scandals. In a separate development that could adversely affect the mission of the working groups and cause division amongst the Arab ministers, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Monday the Arab initiative was doomed to fail because the Arab leaders behind it are half wits and no one would take them seriously. He added that he expected that Israel would not accept the initiative. Tripoli further accused Saudi Arabia of marginalising the diplomacy of Libya and other Arab states by mediating to end the Arab- Israeli conflict and attempting to end the differences between the Lebanese government and the opposition. Gaddafi added that a single state for both the Jews and the Palestinians was the only possible solution. Therefore, it is not only Israeli procrastination, but inter-Arab squabbles which could jeopardise the success of the Arab initiative and any prospects for peace in the Middle East.
