Olmert: Plan marks revolutionary change in outlook

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert praised an Arab peace plan that calls for the full recognition of Israel as a major breakthrough in Arab relations with the Jewish state, but he flatly rejected its demand for the return of Palestinian refugees, Israeli media reported today.

In a string of interviews with Israeli media ahead of the Passover holiday, Olmert said there can be a comprehensive deal to end the Middle East conflict within five years, but stressed that no immediate peace agreement seemed likely.

Efforts to revive long dormant peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have escalated in recent months, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly travelling to the region to coax Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table.

At a summit in Saudi Arabia that ended yesterday, Arab states agreed to relaunch a 2002 peace initiative. That plan calls for full recognition of Israel by the Arab world in return for an Israeli withdrawal from land captured in the 1967 Mideast war and a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees who left their homes inside Israel during the war following Israel’s creation in 1948.

Abbas welcomed the proposal, but the militant Hamas group, which governs with Abbas’ Fatah in a coalition Cabinet, ruled out any possibility of recognising Israel or compromising on a full refugee return.

Olmert said the very idea that Arab leaders could discuss the possibility of normalising relations with Israel represented “a revolutionary change in outlook".

“A bloc of states is emerging that understands that they may have been wrong to think that Israel is the world’s greatest problem,” he told the Haaretz daily.

Olmert told the Maariv newspaper that he didn’t accept the Saudi initiative in its entirety, but saw it as “showing a positive approach".

“The Saudi initiative is not a detailed plan. It’s what’s called a ’state of mind,”’ Olmert said.

Israel has rejected the full withdrawal called for in the plan, hoping to hang on to several settlement blocs in the West Bank and to keep much of east Jerusalem, with its holy sites. Israel also opposes a refugee return, because an influx of Palestinians and their millions of descendants would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Olmert told The Jerusalem Post that a refugee return was “out of the question".

“I’ll never accept a solution that is based on their return to Israel, any number,” he said.

Olmert has acknowledged that any final peace deal would involve painful concessions on Israel’s part.

However, surveys show his popularity with the Israeli public has plunged following last summer’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, and it is unclear if he could muster the political backing to make those concessions if he wanted to.

Olmert made it clear he did not believe a peace deal was imminent, but told Yediot Ahronot that there is “a real chance that within five years Israel will be able to reach a comprehensive peace deal with its enemies".

“Things are happening that haven’t happened in the past, and they’re ripening. We have to know how to take advantage of this opportunity,” Olmert told the paper.

Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin criticised Olmert, saying the prime minister should not wait to make peace.

“There is no reason in the world not to do it now and to wait until what? What will happen in five years?” he said.

In the Haaretz interview, Olmert said he told US officials that “there is no point in a bypass route, and that we have to confront the Palestinians and oblige them to fulfil commitments.”

Previous efforts to negotiate a final status solution foundered over the thorny issues of the fate of Jerusalem, a Palestinian state’s borders and the refugee issue.

The phased “road map” peace plan, whose first step called for disarming Palestinian militant groups and for Israel to halt West Bank settlement expansion, never got off the ground after it was launched four years ago.