Arab League in Jerusalem for 1st Time

In a historic first, an Arab League delegation came to Jerusalem on Wednesday to promote a plan for peace with Israel, saying it offers the country “security, recognition and acceptance” by its Middle East neighbors.

Such a visit -- and offer -- once would have been unimaginable, but was greeted now with little public fanfare, pushed well down on the evening TV news by a public sector strike and a row involving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Led by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, the Arab delegation was taken deep into Israel’s political heartland. The delegates saw the prime minister and the president and visited parliament, bringing a proposal for full recognition of Israel by the Arab and Islamic world in return for Israel’s withdrawal from all lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

While the Israeli and Arab officials greeted each other with smiles, jokes and what looked like genuine warmth, both sides acknowledged that the Arab League peace proposal cannot bypass direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“This serious offer constitutes a major opportunity of historical levels,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah Khatib said at a news conference alongside his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts. “It will provide Israel with the security, recognition and acceptance in this region which Israel has long aspired to.”

He said the plan was endorsed not only by the Arab League, but also by non-Arab Muslim states.

Israel has welcomed the proposal as a basis for negotiations but says parts of it are unacceptable.

After pulling out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel rejects a full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, hoping to retain areas heavily settled by Israelis. And Israel strenuously objects to the plan’s apparent call for the repatriation to Israel of Palestinians who became refugees in the 1948 Mideast war and their descendants -- some 4.4 million people, according to the United Nations. Israel says any influx of refugees would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the way forward was to look for points of agreement between Israel and the Arab world while seeking a bilateral solution to core issues such as the refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

“I think it would be a mistake today ... to start arguing about every clause” of the plan, she said, pointing out that its central tenet, formation of an independent Palestinian state living in peace next to Israel, was shared by the Israeli government and moderate Arab states.

“We are not being asked to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. “We will be helping both the Palestinians and the Israelis to negotiate among themselves.”

He cautioned against any expectation of a quick resolution to the dispute.

“I don’t expect that we shall see a Palestinian state established tomorrow,” he said.

During the parliamentary visit, the Arab ministers were hosted by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, where they appeared to reassure even hawks.

“I am happy to say that after hearing our criticisms they said (the plan) is not an ultimatum, it’s not ‘take it or leave it,’” said Yuval Steinitz of the opposition Likud Party, a frequent critic of Egypt.

Both Jordan and Egypt have peace treaties with Israel and have sent their leaders to the country before, but never on the Arab League’s behalf. In an illustration of the complexities of Middle East diplomacy, there were differing views how exactly to define the delegation.

Israel presented the one-day visit as an unprecedented conciliatory gesture by the Arab League, which actively pursued the destruction of the Jewish state when it was established in 1948, refused to recognize it for decades afterward and suspended Egypt for a decade after it become the first Arab state to make peace with Israel in 1979.

In recent years, however, many Arab League member states have adopted a more conciliatory tone toward Israel, as they became more concerned about the rising influence of Iran’s hard-line regime and al-Qaida’s brand of extremist Islam.

The delegates themselves said they were sent by the Arab League and would report back to it on Monday.

“We have been asked by the Arab League ministerial meeting to come and to offer Israel the Arab peace initiative,” Aboul Gheit told reporters during a visit to Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday morning. Khatib later referred to “the mandate given to us by the Arab committee, assigned by the Arab summit, to follow up on the Arab peace initiative.”

An official at the league’s Cairo headquarters, however, sought to play down the Jerusalem visit, saying it was not an official delegation.

Whether or not a delegation sent to Israel by the Arab League is in fact an Arab League delegation, the visit is part of a flurry of diplomatic efforts meant to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after a seven-year lull. The international community’s Mideast envoy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, made his first trip in his new role to the region this week, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected next week.

Moderate Arab countries and the West have been pushing for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking since Gaza fell to Hamas, a group that refuses to recognize Israel and has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide bombings.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ejected Hamas from government after last month’s Gaza takeover and set up an emergency Cabinet of loyalists that has Western and moderate Arab backing.