More hope for King Abdullah's peace plan?
Aside from Thomas Friedman column in today's New York Times, there is this hopeful news regarding the Saudi king's peace proposal in the Washington Post:
The United States has quietly joined Israel in urging Arab leaders to reformulate their 2002 peace offer in an effort to end the decades-long Middle East conflict, Arab diplomats said Thursday. So far, some Arab heavyweights are publicly resisting the idea.
"The Saudi initiative is interesting, and has many sections that I would be willing to accept _ though, understandably, not all of them _ and it could certainly be a convenient basis for continued dialogue between us and Arab moderates," Olmert is reported as saying.
The Wapo recaps what this plan offers:
The offer, initiated in 2002 by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, offers Israel recognition and permanent peace with all Arab countries in return for full Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It also calls for setting up a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to former homes in Israel.
As the Post reports, "Israel rejects full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and it strongly opposes the influx of large numbers of Palestinian refugees into the Jewish state."
So how much room will Israel have to move on this plan? According to the Post's sources:
"Nobody is talking about returning 5 million Palestinians to Israel," Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa's chief of staff, Hesham Youssef, is reported as saying. "But giving into one-sided demands will be a strategic blunder."Egyptian and Saudi leaders have said they want the offer to stand as is, and Syrian Vice President Farouk al Sharaa has been touring Arab countries urging no changes.
But Jordan's King Abdullah II, a key partner in the peace efforts, has called for "Arab consensus on moving the peace process forward" _ widely interpreted as a sign of flexibility on Israeli demands.
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