July 10, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1428

JERUSALEM: Efforts to rekindle Middle East peacemaking gather pace almost a month after Hamas's bloody takeover of Gaza, with key international players due in the region as Arab ministers prepare for a rare visit to Israel.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and his Jordanian opposite number Abdel Ilah al-Khatib are expected in Israel on Thursday for talks on a recently revived Arab League peace initiative.

The Arab League has tasked Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel, with trying to persuade the Jewish state to accept the Saudi-sponsored peace plan.

“There is a new atmosphere in the region and we want to exploit it,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

But the difficulties involved in trying to resolve the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict were underscored when sharp differences emerged over the significance of the Jordan-Egypt visit.

Israel hailed it as a historic mission by the Cairo-based 22-member body — which does not have relations with the Jewish state.

“This is the first time ever that we have in Israel an official representative of the Arab League which has in the past had a policy of boycotting Israel,” Regev said.

But the Arab League angrily denied the ministers represented an official delegation and accused Israel of trying to turn it into a public relations event.

“The Arab League has no relations with Israel. It is not sending an Arab League delegation to Israel. The League has tasked Egypt and Jordan to go to Israel because they have relations with Israel,” Arab League assistant secretary general Mohammed Sobeih said in Cairo.

“We have full trust in the ability of the Egyptian and Jordanian ministers, and we will not give Israel the opportunity to use this as a public relations event because we want to get straight to the issue of peace.” The peace initiative, first adopted in 2002 and revived in March, offers normalisation of ties in return for full withdrawal from Arab land seized in the 1967 war, the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel initially rejected the plan but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has since cautiously welcomed parts of the initiative although Israel wants amendments to the refugee issue.

Peace talks have effectively been at an impasse since the launch of the Palestinian intifada or uprising seven years ago, and tentative efforts to resume negotiations were dashed when Hamas won an election in January 2006.

In other moves, a meeting of the Middle East Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — is possible in Egypt next week, coinciding with a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Israel has been taking steps aimed at bolstering Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas after Hamas — branded a terror group by Israel and the West — seized control of the Gaza Strip on June 15 after days of brutal bloodletting.

The move effectively split the Palestinians into two entities and established an Islamist enclave sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, with the West backing Abbas and his West Bank-based emergency government.

Israel's defence and foreign ministers have met new Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad, and officials said Abbas and Olmert could also meet again soon.

The cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture to Abbas, although the figure represents a fraction of the more than 11,000 currently being held.

Israel has also released $118 million in Palestinian custom duties that it has withheld for more than a year following the election win by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.—AFP