Israel to Arab states: Press PA to resume peace negotiations

The government has sent messages to several Arab states recently, seeking to counter negative reactions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Sunday and asking them to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations with Israel.

As part of this effort, National Security Council chairman Uzi Arad met with Egyptian officials in Cairo this week, including intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.

In his speech, Netanyahu called for a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state of Israel. Though this is the first time since taking office that he has expressed support for a Palestinian state, several aspects of the speech sparked angry responses in Arab states. Therefore, a senior government source said, Israel is seeking to reassure these states that the change in Netanyahu's position is real.

Israel is asking Arab states to pressure Abbas to meet with Netanyahu and resume negotiations, the source said. So far, all contacts between Israel and the PA have been handled at a lower level and have been confined to day-to-day issues, as the Palestinians are refusing to resume final-status talks.

Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor discussed this problem Thursday in a talk at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"Maintaining the status quo is not an option for Israel," he said. "Abu Mazen will not receive from Netanyahu what [former premier Ehud] Olmert agreed to give him, but the Palestinians need to show they are undergoing a change that will lead to an agreement. Netanyahu said he is willing for a Palestinian state to arise, and now the question is which way Abu Mazen will go."

But the Arab states are not the only problem, Israeli officials have discovered: In closed discussions many senior American and European officials have also expressed unhappiness with Netanyahu's speech, although publicly they have praised it.

"Netanyahu needs to know that one speech, a large part of which was in any case meant to reassure his coalition, will not buy us," one White House official said, according to an Israeli source. "If anyone is under any illusions, we do not intend to reduce the pressure to achieve progress."

Similar comments were heard at a dinner in Luxembourg on Monday where European foreign ministers hosted some of their Arab counterparts, including the foreign ministers of the PA, Egypt, Jordan and several Gulf states. At this dinner, the Arab ministers lambasted the speech, and some European ministers concurred: Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, for instance, said the speech merely raised new and unnecessary obstacles to negotiations.

However, his Spanish and British counterparts, Miguel Moratinos and David Miliband, termed the speech an important turnaround.

And in contrast to the other Arab speakers, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa also sounded cautiously optimistic. "You can't ignore the fact that Netanyahu said new things," he said. "Now, we need to think about what to do with it."