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Last update - 08:46 29/10/2008
Arab peace initiative has Barak backing, but Livni still cautious
By Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak 

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President Shimon Peres also supports this view, although his position as head of state precludes his taking an active role in the political discourse.

Livni, the foreign minister, does not oppose the Arab peace initiative, but believes that efforts must focus directly on the Palestinian track.

Livni has disparaged Barak's approach, calling it, in private conversation, an "attempt to seek a diplomatic agenda for himself and the Labor Party." Livni has also said privately, "I'm for world peace and regional harmony, too; who isn't? But is it realistic?"

Still, Livni has not abandoned the regional arena. On November 12, she is to take part in New York in an interreligious summit hosted by Saudi King Abdullah and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, with the participation of outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush. King Abdullah is the architect of the original Arab peace initiative, and also oversaw its reaffirmation last year at the Riyadh Summit.

Livni's bureau declined to discuss her planned trip to the New York meeting.

It has been difficult lately to differentiate between statements by Barak and Peres on the peace process. Peres spoke enthusiastically about the Arab initiative in his address at the opening session of the Knesset this week, and was echoed by Barak in a radio interview. At a Labor Party faction meeting, Barak attacked the "piggish capitalism of the right," using an old Peres stock phrase.

Sources close to Barak and Peres say the two are coordinating their positions and talk frequently with each other, including a regular Sunday morning breakfast at the President's Residence before the weekly cabinet meeting. Peres consulted with Barak (and with Livni) extensively before traveling to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last week to meet with President Hosni Mubarak.

To those familiar with Barak and Peres' history, this late-blooming romance comes as a surprise. From the day Barak entered politics in 1995, he positioned himself as the successor to Yitzhak Rabin, and as Peres' rival. His position as foreign minister in the short-lived Peres cabinet after Rabin's assassination was fraught with mutual suspicion. Barak later prevented Peres from being named "president" of the Labor Party, and when he was elected prime minister in 1999, he appointed Peres to the negligible post of "regional cooperation minister."

Peres got back at Barak when he attempted, unsuccessfully, to run against him in the prime ministerial election in 2001 as the candidate of Meretz, thus challenging Barak's legitimacy among voters on the left.

However, ties were restored in July 2006 when Peres, then a Kadima minister in Ehud Olmert's cabinet, called Barak to consult before the cabinet meeting in which it was decided to go to war in Lebanon, and have grown even closer over the past five months.

Barak, political sources say, is trying to bring Peres, who left Labor for Kadima, over to his side, in anticipation of the coming Knesset election. As president, Peres cannot take part in the campaign, but if his and Barak's messages are the same, it will be clear who Peres supports. For Barak that is enough.

Peres has increased his support for the Arab peace initiative, encouraged by his associate Avi Gil, a former Foreign Ministry deputy director general who is seeking formulas to advance the diplomatic process. "The Arab peace initiative is waiting in the bottle, without ever having been treated seriously by Israel," sources close to the president are saying. Those same sources note that the initiative does not supplant the dual Syrian-Palestinian track, but supports and strengthens it. "Only Ahmadinejad and Yuval Steinitz are against it, because they do not want peace," a source said, referring respectively to the president of Iran and a Likud lawmaker.

Peres told the Knesset at the opening of its winter session that the 2002 Arab peace initiative was a "yes to peace" that replaced the "three no's" of the 1967 Khartoum summit - no to peace, no to recognition of Israel and no to negotiations.

Livni noted in recent discussions that two years ago she had called on Arab countries to begin phased normalization with Israel while it negotiated with the Palestinians, rather than waiting for negotiations to conclude. Livni discussed her approach last year with numerous senior Arab officials, including the emir of Qatar and the foreign ministers of Oman, Morocco and Bahrain, among others, all of whom told her that the key to the peace process was an agreement with the Palestinians.

"I am the one who met in Cairo with the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, and then I invited them to come here as representatives of the Arab League to discuss the Arab initiative," she says. "But after they came, I understood that as far as they were concerned, an agreement with the Palestinians came before anything else." This was also Mubarak's message to Peres in their meeting last week.

Sources close to Peres and Barak said that after Livni hosted the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan in July 2007, who had come to present the Arab initiative, she told the two Israelis that this was an opportunity that should not be missed. "But what did she do? She did not establish any system to promote it," a source said.

To date only the Geneva Initiative and those clearly identified with the left have tried to promote the Arab peace initiative, particularly as a means of persuading the Israeli public that it will not obligate Israel to absorb Palestinian refugees into Israel. Professor Ilai Alon, a Tel Aviv University expert on Muslim philosophy and theology, who has distributed an updated translation of the initiative, has written that it is persuasively sincere and even alludes to the fact that the Arab League is prepared to represent the Palestinians and compel them to accept an agreement. However, these voices remained marginalized until Barak and Peres discovered the peace initiative "in the bottle."

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      2.   Barak and Peres - Double Trouble ( Twin Towers of Idiocy) 04:25  |  Tod Zuckerman 29/10/08
      3.   Well, that`s two zionists who understand... 05:43  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
      4.   BS Journalist: Wingnut Extraordinaire 05:59  |  Tex 29/10/08
      5.   #1 They are starting to flock as I write, BBSNews 06:04  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
      6.   The phenomenal success of Peres in promoting himself. 06:30  |  Akram Zekaria 29/10/08
      7.   If that plan was so good.... 06:50  |  Ilan 29/10/08
      8.   Illusions Deceptions and betrayal, why should 07:37  |  Kris Lazar 29/10/08
      9.   It amazes me Johnboy... 08:02  |  BBSNews 29/10/08
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      11.   Wingnuts of Charlotte, unite! 08:38  |  Joe Sittizen 29/10/08
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      14.   The ideal duo should still be Tzipora-Ehud B.... 09:12  |  Esther 29/10/08
      15.   #6 Here`s something to make you laugh and cry, BBSNews 09:26  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
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      18.   Peace Plan Negotiation Strategy. 10:02  |  Daniel Garcia 29/10/08
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      20.   Daniel Garcia what kind of peace are we looking for 10:09  |  Margie in Tel Aviv 29/10/08
      21.   #8 Pointing this out one more time....... 10:25  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
      22.   #13 Pointing this out, once again..... 10:47  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
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      26.   #25 Let me try again, Sam 13:27  |  Johnboy 29/10/08
      27.   Not worth the paper it`ll be written on! 13:29  |  Nadav 29/10/08
      28.   the motto of barak and peres is never look back 13:30  |  victor hardman 29/10/08
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      32.   #26 Johnboy: thanks for the excellent idea! 15:53  |  Alicia 29/10/08
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      39.   Yo BBS news, fake name guy, all we have been asking for is a stop 18:54  |  John 29/10/08
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      45.   BBSNews and Johnnyboy 19:09  |  Said 29/10/08
      46.   To Said-Actually Israel invaded Lebanon and the Pa to stop... 19:46  |  Jordan 29/10/08
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      53.   #50 Dagma, Res 242 says nothing of the sort. 03:22  |  Johnboy 30/10/08
      54.   #46 I`m having a flashback to the swining 60`s, Jordan 06:11  |  Johnboy 30/10/08
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      56.   To Johnboy # 53 - Go back to AUJTHENTIC 242 07:42  |  Dagma 30/10/08
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