ISRAELI DIPLOMAT REFUSES ARAB LEAGUE PEACE INITIATIVE
Gaza City, 4 Rajab 1434/14 May 2013 (MINA) – Israel’s former representative in Washington, DC, Yoram Ettinger on Monday (13/5) warned Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against accepting Arab League peace initiative between Palestine and Israel.
“Accepting ‘Arab Initiative’ is suicide,” he described the Arab League’s peace plan as no more than “a honey trap”. Al Ray reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
The Arab proposal, explained Ettinger, is based on UN Resolution 194, that favors the so called “right of return” of Arab “refugees” to what he claimed ( Israel) – occupied Palestine – and would have Israel go back to indefensible 1949 Armistice lines.
“People who favor the proposal and who are pressuring Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the matter are ignoring the lessons of the Oslo agreements,” he said, as well as the incitement to hatred that leads to “a terror production line.” Ettinger added.
The Arab Peace Initiative is a comprehensive peace initiative first proposed in 2002 at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League by then-Crown Prince, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and re-endorsed at the Riyadh Summit in 2007. The initiative attempts to end the Arab–Israeli conflict, which means normalizing relations between the entire Arab region and Israel.
George Mitchell, then the United States special envoy to the Middle East, announced in March 2009 that President Barack Obama‘s administration intends to “incorporate” the initiative into its Middle East policy.
The Arab League summit held in the aftermath of the massive Israeli victory in the Six-Day War established the Khartoum Resolution on September 1, 1967 with the “three No’s” that was to be the center of all Israeli-Arab relations after that point: No peace deals, no diplomatic recognitions, and no negotiations.
Like most peace plans since 1967, it is based on UN Security Council Resolution 242. It followed the July 2000 Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David which ended in failure and the al-Aqsa Intifada beginning in September 2000.
Palestine refugees includes Arabs
Palestine refugees includes Arabs whose normal places of residence were in Israel and Jews who had their homes in Arab Palestine, such as the those from the Jewish quarter of the Old City. Their right of return was recognized in United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948.
In the hostilities of 1948, 85% of the Palestinian Arab population left their homes, either driven by force or by fear, fleeing to the West Bank and Gaza, and to the contiguous countries of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. They, and their descendents, who are also entitled to registration, are assisted by UNWRA in 58 registered camps, 10 of which were established in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967 to cope with new Palestinian refugees. Including unregistered, displaced persons and refugee descendents, the Palestinian Arab refugee and displaced population is the largest in the world.
Their conditions of life are precarious. Citizenship or legal residency in host countries is denied in Lebanon where the absorption of Palestinians would upset a delicate confessional balance, but available in Jordan where approximately 40% of UNWRA-registered Palestinian refugees have acquired full citizenship rights. Resolution 194 was adopted by the General Assembly on 11 December 1948, calling for the return of refugees from the ongoing Arab-Israeli hostilities. It forms one basis for the Palestinian Arab claim for a ‘right of return’.
Though the 1948 refugees and their descendants are broadly defined as “refugees” . Palestinian Arabs make several distinctions. The PLO especially those who have returned and form part of the PNA, but also Palestinian refugee camp residents in Lebanon repudiate this term, since it implies being a passive victim, and prefer the autonym of ‘returnees’ . Those who left since 1967, and their descendants, are called nazihun or ‘displaced persons’, though many descend from the 1948 group.
An independent poll conducted in 2003 with the Palestinian populations of Gaza, West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon showed that the majority (54%) would accept a financial compensation and a place to live in West Bank/Gaza in place of returning to the exact place in modern-day Israel where they or their ancestors lived (this possibility of settlement is contemplated in the Resolution 194. (T/P04/E1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
