Arab League to hold yet another summit meeting
Many Arabs dismiss the Arab League as a mere debating club where heads of state shoot the breeze. However, the Arab League is one of very few institutions able to define the Arab consensus on issues of great concern to Arabs.
On March 28 the League will hold a summit meeting in Arabia to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative, a plan written by Arabia's King Abdullah.
The Peace Initiative offers peace and normal relations with Israel in return for (1) the evacuation of territories occupied since 1967, and (2) the acceptance of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, based on UN General Assembly Resolution 194.This would allow refugees to choose between repatriation and compensation.
The Arab Peace Initiative was adopted in Beirut in 2002 by all members of the 22-nation Arab League. Nothing like it had been advanced collectively by Arab countries (or individually by an Arab head of state) since 1965, when president Habib Bourghiba of Tunisia told an audience that Arabs should recognize Israel if Israel went back to its 1947 borders. (Israeli officials rejected the idea at the time.)
At the March 28 meeting, Israel will tamper with the 2002 language of the document, amending it to make the term “occupied territories” open to interpretation. Israel will also insist that the "just" solution to the refugee problem will be resettlement elsewhere, not repatriation to Palestine.
Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice wants to hold her own summit meeting to counter the Arabs. She is in touch with European allies, plus members of the Quartet, and UN personnel about convening a Middle East summit. As with Israel and the Arab League, Rice will tamper will the text of the Arab Peace Initiative.
Palestinian representatives will not be invited.
All Israeli political parties have staunchly refused to consider any withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Currently there are an estimated 250,000 Jewish “colonists” occupying choice Palestinian land in the West Bank, plus 180,000 other Jews living in the illegally annexed areas of eastern Jerusalem.
One is reminded here of the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia who was once asked by a reporter about the Palestine problem. His response: "There is no Palestinian problem, there's only an Israeli problem."
And that problem is directly of America's creation.
Source:
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/03/17/10111578.html
