According to the Ha'aretz of 25/10/2008, President Shimon Peres endorsed on Thursday 23/11/2008 the spirit of a broad Arab Peace Initiative (API), as an opportunity that could bring peace to the Middle East, speaking at a meeting with Egypt's President in Sharm el-Sheikh.
It was the first time Peres spoke in an Arab country in support of the long-stalled initiative, adding significance to his remarks, such as to negotiate on the API.
The Egyptian President Mubarak commented that the API doesn’t need negotiating over its contents, so Israel should agree on it to start the process.
Peres' remarks also marked another step in his recent efforts to jump-start a 2002 Saudi proposal for comprehensive peace in the region. One week before the statement of President Peres, IDF defense minister Barak made a similar statement urging his government to agree on the API (where he called it the Saudi initiative), as a good base for the peace negotiations with The Arab World, in order to achieve peace in the region. He also stated that the Israeli government was satisfied about the Calmness in Gaza, and hoped to extend it on the West Bank.
Israeli leaders were seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. He also stated that it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region since individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians showed little progress.
Barak said he had discussed the Saudi plan with prime minister-designate Tzipi Livni, and that Israel was considering a response. Saudi Arabia first proposed the peace initiative in 2002, offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 border.
The 22-member Arab League endorsed the plan last year. The Israeli government had in the past described the plan as a good basis for discussion, but expressed some reservations. There should definitely be room to introduce a comprehensive Israeli plan to counter the Saudi plan that would be the basis for a discussion on overall regional peace, Barak told Army Radio. He noted the deep, joint interest with moderate Arab leaders in containing Iran's nuclear ambitions and limiting the influence of Hezbollah and Hamas.
Analyst Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian minister, said that although the Israeli interest in the six-year-old plan was a little bit late, the plan was still valid and indeed offered the most promising potential way forward.
While outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had welcomed the Saudi plan, he and other leaders wanted to keep small parts of the territories captured in 1967. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that pursuing the Saudi peace initiative did not necessarily undermine the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians and he encouraged Israel to pursue this track. "I think Israel should have done this since 2002. It is the most strategic initiative that came from the Arab world since 1948," he said.
On 1/12/2008 the “Haaretz Israeli newspaper” reported that the European Union prepared a document in preparation for Barack Obama when he is taking over as the President of United States on 20/1/2009. The document included the path of the peace process during the next year, and also it called for pressure on Israel to reopen Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem, including the Orient House . This document was to be presented to the foreign ministers of the European Union, to be held a week later, during the presence of 27 of the Foreign Affairs Ministers.
The document assured that the EU should encourage the new US President Barack Obama to maintain the continued US involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, so both the EU and US must therefore strengthen their communication and relations to achieve this goal. It was also found important to improve the role of the international community, in order to implement the first phase of the Roadmap, with an emphasis on a complete halt of the construction of settlements and the removal of military checkpoints. The Palestinians were urged to fight terrorism.
According to the document, in 2009, the European Union intended to work on three tracks:
First: the Jerusalem issue; The description of one capital city for two nations is a key to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The EU is to work intensively for the reopening of the Orient House and other Palestinian institutions closed by Israel.
Second : the security issue; The European Union expresses its readiness to participate effectively in security arrangements for the final solution, including the dispatch of police, soldiers and European civilians in the West Bank in order to increase the training of Palestinian security forces, and furthermore monitor the implementation of the agreement.
A third trend: The refugees issue; In the EU plan, the need for a "realistic and fair" solution is identified. In this context the European Union is preparing to establish an organization or an international mechanism to compensate and rehabilitate the refugees in coordination with Israel and the Palestinians.
The document praised the efforts of the Palestinian Authority for maintaining security and said that the PA had carried out many steps in the direction of improving the security situation in the West Bank. So, Israel must hand over security authority in large parts of the West Bank and the PA must expand the presence of Palestinian security forces outside the cities during 2009.
The European Union expects Israel to freeze construction in settlements, also where it concerns the expansion of the natural growing purposes, including East Jerusalem.
The document, devised by the French Foreign Ministry, concluded with emphasizing that the EU would send a clear message to Israel regarding the settlements and would discuss other ways to influence Israel, including the issue of boycotting goods exported from the settlements.
In the meantime (specifically at a meeting on 9/12/2008), the EU had started a new era of establishing more tight and strategic relations with Israel. Although the decisions made, talked about the Israeli violations of human rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and about the closure of the Gaza Strip, the EU adopted a very unconditional number of serious decisions regarding the relations with Israel.
1. From then on there would be Israeli-European Periodical summits;
2. Three meetings would be held each year between the European foreign ministers with the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs;
3. Israel would from then on be invited to participate in the EU organized humanitarian missions that were relevant to Israel;
4. Israel would be invited to the EU security meetings.
Despite the fact that the decision began with mentioning the need for Israel to end any violations of Human Rights and to end the occupation, the four decisions were not made conditional to Israeli actions concerning the peace process or ending the occupation - a matter that made the Palestinian Prime-Minister Salam Fayyad severely criticize the EU.
Barak Ravid wrote in Ha’aretz on 6/12/2008 that Israeli officials were deeply concerned over an internal European Union document outlining the EU's plans for advancing an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2009. Inter-alia, it called for increased pressure on Israel to reopen Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, including the Orient House, which formerly served as the Palestinian Authority's headquarters in the city.
The document, a copy of which was obtained by Ha’aretz, was written by the French Foreign Ministry, as France at the time occupied the EU's rotating presidency.
It was slated to be discussed a week later at a meeting of the EU's foreign ministers, and Israel was trying to get various elements changed before then.
Titled "The EU Action Strategy for Peace in the Middle East: The Way Forward," the document proposed various steps the EU should take in 2009 on both the Palestinian and the Syrian tracks, with emphasis on the former. However, its proposals were liable to result in a clash with whatever new government Israelis would elect in February, whether headed by Tzipi Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu.
The EU, it stated, must encourage the newly elected American government to be actively engaged in Israeli-Palestinian talks. In addition, the document states, the international community must closely monitor the implementation of the first stage of the road map peace plan, which required Israel to freeze settlement construction and remove West Bank roadblocks, and the PA to fight terror.
Regarding the so-called core issues of the conflict - borders, security, Jerusalem and refugees - the document proposed three main lines of action, which have already been described above.
