Israel's defense minister said that a dormant Saudi initiative for Middle East peace could be a "basis for negotiation," indicating a new possibility for talks with the Palestinians after years of stalemate.
The Saudi plan calls for a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world, based on a complete Israeli withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 war -- the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said he was not endorsing the plan. But he was the most senior Israeli official even to publicly consider it.
"We could see the Saudi initiative as the basis for negotiation. This does not mean that we are adopting the Saudi initiative, but it can serve as a basis," Peretz said at an academic conference at Tel Aviv University.
Meanwhile, fighting broke out early yesterday in the Gaza Strip as Israeli troops and helicopter airstrikes killed four Palestinian militants and wounded 33 people as troops moved into a northern Gaza town, Palestinian security and hospital officials said.
Palestinian hospital officials said the wounded included a woman and an 11-year-old boy. The others were almost all armed militants, they added. Fourteen Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for attacking Israeli troops.
The army said its troops were still operating in the town of Beit Hanoun, in the latest phase in a four-month-old-offensive in the area. The army said 300 rockets have been fired from Beit Hanoun at Israel since the beginning of the year.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops shot and killed three Hamas militants during operations in Gaza.
The Saudi initiative was adopted at an Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon, in March 2002. For the first time, it offered Israel normal relations with the entire Arab world in exchange for a complete withdrawal from captured territory.
Israel reacted skeptically at the time, rejecting an addition by Saudi Arabia requiring Israel to recognize the demand to take back Palestinian refugees from the 1948-1949 war that followed the creation of the Jewish state, as well as their descendants -- an estimated 4 million people.
Israel has offered compensation instead, maintaining that demanding a "right of return" is a way of undermining the Jewish character of the state and destroying it from within.
Israel also questioned the meaning of "normal relations" and rejected a total withdrawal from all the territories.
In various unsuccessful rounds of peace talks, Israel has offered an almost complete pullout from the West Bank and Golan Heights, and last year it withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. However, it maintains that the pre-1967 cease-fire lines are not a border, and it wants to adjust the line to include main West Bank Jewish settlement blocks in Israel.
At the time, Israel asked Saudi Arabia to send an envoy to clarify the proposal, but that did not happen.
In 2003, the Saudi initiative was overtaken by the US-backed "road map" peace plan, which called for establishment of a Palestinian state in a three-stage process and mentioned the Saudi initiative as part of the basis for the solution.
However, the plan was frozen from the outset when neither side implemented its initial steps. Israel failed to dismantle dozens of unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts, and the Palestinians declined to disarm violent groups.
Peace moves have been stalled since 2000, when the outbreak of Palestinian violence followed a failed summit meeting of Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the US.
Israel's official position has been that the "road map" is the only plan on the table now, but Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev indicated the Saudi plan could be the basis for talks.
"Israel has never accepted the Saudi initiative but would see positive elements in the initiative, particularly the call for reconciliation" Regev told reporters.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS