Arab League to visit Israel for peace talks

BigNewsNetwork.com Wednesday 11th July, 2007

An Arab League delegation will visit Israel for peace talks later this month.

It will be the first visit in more than half a century since the foundation of both the Arab League and Israel.

The delegates, including the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, are scheduled to visit July 25th, an Israel foreign ministry spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

The meeting will focus on the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offers all-round Arab recognition of Israel in return for a full withdrawal from the West Bank and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Israel has welcomed the proposal and said it was willing to discuss it with Arab League representatives, though it has expressed serious reservations about the Palestinian refugee issue.

Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert has said the Jewish state will accept no responsibility for the refugees.

Israel wants the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in neighbouring Arab states to be absorbed by a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. It does not want to absorb them within Israel.

It fears that accepting the refugees into its own territory will result in a Palestinian majority that will effectively mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state and the de-facto creation of another Palestinian state next to the West Bank and Gaza.

But Israeli officials have nevertheless described the offer of wide Arab recognition of Israel as 'historic'.