It's Time to Dust Off Arab Peace Initiative
According to Nassif Hitti, the Arab Peace Initiative is the most comprehensive initiative in addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The end of this month will witness the 11th anniversary of the Arab Peace Initiative (API) adopted at the annual Arab League Summit meeting held in Beirut in March 2002. The API came as a political but also as a psychological breakthrough in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It reflected and confirmed the major change that occurred, and not easily, in the Arab perception of the conflict and its settlement.
Indeed, the conflict was no longer defined as one of exclusivity of rights or as an existential conflict: It was no longer a conflict covering all of Palestine but one about the creation of a Palestinian state. The perception further evolved: It was no more a denial of Israel’s right to exist, but it became an insistence on the right of a Palestinian state to exist with east Jerusalem as its capital, next to Israel and not in its place.
The de jure recognition of Israel by the Arabs is left to the end of the peace process and not before addressing the issues of contention
