April 12th

What the “Israeli Peace Initiative” has to offer In Print by Hussein Ibish - NOW Lebanon - April 12, 2011 - 12:00am On April 6, a group of prominent Israelis released the “Israeli Peace Initiative,” an answer to the Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab League in 2002. The biggest difference between the two documents is that one is official, formally adopted by a large group of states, and the other is a civil society initiative. This puts the two documents on significantly unequal footing. However, the new Israeli private initiative bears serious consideration, given the paucity of any other Israeli response to the API and the lack of diplomatic activity generally. » Read more

April 4th

Arabs yearn to move on In Print by Hussein Ibish - Bitterlemons (Blog) - April 30, 2011 - 12:00am Probably the most important clause in the Arab Peace Initiative, first adopted by the Arab League at the Beirut summit in 2002 and reaffirmed on several occasions including in 2007, is its commitment to "establish normal relations with Israel in the context of [a] comprehensive peace." This represented the culmination of decades of evolution of Arab thinking regarding relations with Israel, and the final repudiation of the Khartoum resolution of 1967, which insisted the Arabs would have "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it". » Read more