RAMALLAH – US president Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, yesterday called for an Arab peace initiative to be part of a planned US drive to create a Palestinian state.
The 2002 Arab initiative offers Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for a full withdrawal from the lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, creation of a Palestinian state, and a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees.
“The US is committed to the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state where the aspirations of the Palestinian people to control their destiny are realised. We want the Arab peace initiative to be part of the effort to reach this goal,” Mr Mitchell said after talks with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
On Thursday Mr Mitchell met Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has yet to commit to restarting US-backed talks with Mr Abbas on core issues such as statehood borders and the future of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. Israeli officials quoted Mr Netanyahu as telling Mr Mitchell that his right-leaning government wanted the Palestinians to first recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinians have long rejected such explicit recognition of the Jewish nature of a state where one in five people is Arab.
“It is clear that there is a government in Israel that rejects signed agreements, that insists on continuing settlement activities,” senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Mr Erekat said Mr Abbas asked Mr Mitchell to “exert every possible effort” to pressurise Israel to commit to a two-state solution and to meet other obligations, including a freeze in Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and a halt to home demolitions in Arab East Jerusalem.
Mr Netanyahu’s two-week-old government has yet to take a public position on the Arab peace initiative. A senior Israeli official quoted Mr Mitchell as telling Mr Netanyahu that “we intend to seriously examine the Arab proposal”.
A senior western diplomat familiar with the Obama administration’s deliberations said Washington wanted to pursue the Arab peace initiative but was keeping its options open. “We have put the flag squarely in the two-state solution camp but we haven’t said how you get there,” the diplomat said. – (Reuters)