The Arab states league decided Wednesday to promote its peace initiative, first launched in 2002 and revived on March .
In a ministerial meeting of the Arab Quartet (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates), the Arab league established two committees; one comprised of Egypt and Jordan, the second made up of eight Arab counties.
The Jordanian-Egyptian committee will hold direct talks with Israel to explore possibilities for implementing the initiative, while the eight-member committee will fly to world capitals to garner backing for such peace proposal.
Saudi Foreign Minister, Fahd Bin Abdelazziz, told reporters yesterday that unless Israel withdraws from the occupied Arab territories, there would be no normalization with Israel.
Secretary General of the Arab league, Amr Mousa, believed that this peace proposal is ‘a chance for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and prevailing peace in the Middle East’.
Israel rebuffed the Arab peace offer, considering it incompatible with current developments and calling for its amendment.
It also refused to solve the Palestinian refugees problem in accordance with the United Nations resolution 194, which calls for the refugees return to Palestine and compensation for the catastrophe (Nakba) they have been going through for the past six decades.
In late March, the Arab countries re-endorsed their peace proposal of 2002, during a regular summit meeting the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh.
In 1967, Israel occupied Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian territories, while in 1948 it displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Palestine to neighboring Arab countries.
Israel had signed peace treaties with both Egypt and Jordan, while peace on other tracks has not been realized, as Israel still occupies the Palestinian territories, the Syrian Golan Heights and a part of the Lebanese soil.
