ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to explore the possibility of a comprehensive peace with the entire Muslim world, rather than just a narrow Israeli-Palestinian accord, when he has his first meeting with US President Barack Obama next week in Washington.
As reports surface this week that Arab leaders were looking to offer Israel a "57-state solution" involving peace with the entire Muslim world, Mr Netanyahu met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and said the Jewish people wanted "harmonious relations" with the Muslim world.
"Israel yearns to reach peace with its Palestinian neighbours and with all the Arab nations," he said.
"We all live in this region and we are all the sons of Abraham."
The much-anticipated meeting between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Obama is expected to lay down the first clear marker on the direction of the Middle East peace process in the coming years.
Mr Obama has strongly indicated his intention to pursue the process vigorously and not to let it wither, as it has in recent years. He has also spoken approvingly of the Saudi-initiated Arab Peace Plan, which calls for Israel's withdrawal to the pre-Six Day War borders in return for peace with the Arab world, although he has not specifically endorsed all its provisions.
Mr Netanyahu has until now rejected several of its key provisions, including withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem. It is not clear how the two leaders will propose resolving these issues.
The London-based Arabic-language daily al-Quds al-Arabi reported last week that at Mr Obama's request, the Arab League was in the process of revising the peace plan to make it more amenable to Israel.
The revisions would reportedly stipulate that a future Palestinian state be demilitarised and, in a major concession, the Palestinians would forfeit the right of refugees to return to Israel proper.
Instead, some of the refugees would be resettled in the Palestinian state to be established on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the rest would be absorbed in the Arab states where they are now dwelling.
Such changes would go a long way to softening Israeli reservations about the plan, but Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa denied the report yesterday, saying there would be "no sweetening" of the plan for Israel.
In an interview with The Times of London, Jordan's King Abdullah said the entire Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, would recognise the Jewish state if it accepted the Arab peace plan.
"We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms," said the monarch, whose late father, King Hussein, signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. King Abdullah warned, however, that there could be another war within 18 months if Israel rejected the peace initiative.
Since the Oslo accords 15 years ago in which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, headed by Yasser Arafat, began a fitful peace process, it has led only to dead-ends. Whether a regional approach can overcome this deadlock is a major question.
Mr Netanyahu's recent election appeared to mean a retreat from even the theoretical possibility of peace with the Palestinians because of his outright rejection of a two-state solution, in which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel. Instead, he suggested building up the Palestinian economy and its institutions to the point of self-government but not sovereignty.
It is considered possible, perhaps likely, that he will feel obliged in his meeting with Mr Obama to shift his position.
"He will have to clearly accept the two-state principle and commit himself to the civic, economic and security development of the Palestinian Authority," wrote analyst Gidi Grinstein in Ha'aretz yesterday.
Source: The Australian
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