ISRAEL’S lead ‘peace negotiator,’ Tzipi Livni, has praised as ‘important’ a concession by the Arab League that Israel and the Palestinians could trade land in a bid to move the peace process forward.
Speaking on Israel Army radio last Tuesday, Livni said: ‘This is very good news, it’s definitely an important step – I welcome it.
‘Let’s talk about it – we are ready for changes, something which will allow the Palestinians, I hope, to enter the negotiating room and make the necessary compromises’.
She was speaking after Arab League representatives said, for the first time, they would accept the concept of land swaps in the context of an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
‘It also gives a message to Israeli citizens: it is no longer just us . . . talking with the Palestinians, there is a group of Arab states who are saying: “you reach an agreement with the Palestinians and we will make peace with you, we will have normalization with you”.’
Meanwhile in Washington on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with top Arab League officials to discuss the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, a Saudi proposal which would see 22 Arab countries normalising ties with Israel in return for a withdrawal from lands it occupied during the 1967 Six Days War.
Speaking after the talks Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim, who led the delegation, agreed that any deal should be based on a two-state solution with the borders defined by the lines which existed before June 4th, 1967.
But he also expressed support for a proposal by US President Barack Obama for a ‘comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land’ between Israelis and Palestinians to reflect the realities of the burgeoning communities on the ground.
• Arab former prisoners of Israel, who were deported to the Gaza Strip on their release, say they are not being allowed to return to their homelands.
In the 1990s, the Israeli government, led by Ehud Barak, released 42 Arab prisoners on condition they spent three years in the Gaza Strip, in a deal agreed with the Palestinian Authority.
However, after spending three years in exile in Gaza, the prisoners were not allowed to return to their countries. They say that despite the hospitality they received in Gaza, they want to return to their loved ones.
Mousa Nur, 41, from Darfur travelled to Palestine via Lebanon and Syria when he was 18 to join the Palestinian struggle.
‘As we watched footage on TV stations of the killing of Palestinians during the first Intifada, I decided I should do something to help the Palestinians,’ Nur said.
After military training, he went to northern Israel with two other fighters. He was injured in clashes with an Israeli patrol near Kfar Yuval, and detained and sentenced to life.
‘My companions were killed, and I was injured and detained.
‘My family only knew I was alive seven years later. At the beginning they thought I had been killed.
‘I tried to send letters to my family, but the Israelis used to dump those letters,’ Nur said.
Nur was released in 1996, following the Oslo Accords, and deported to Gaza for three years.
His mother has died and his father is in a critical condition, but he has not been allowed to return home.
Salama Jihama, from Egypt’s Sinai, was detained by Israeli forces after he planted an explosive device.
He was sentenced to 22 years, but released after 15 years and deported to Gaza for three years.
After spending three years in Gaza, Jihama tried to return to Egypt three times and was refused entry.
He says Egypt’s embassy in Gaza told him that it is responsible for coordination with the Palestinian Authority and has ‘nothing to do with troubles with the Israeli side’.
Ali al-Bayati, an Iraqi who spent time in Israeli prisons, said 1,555 people from Arab countries have been detained by Israel since 1967, and 35 are still in Israeli jails.
‘We came to Palestine in 1967 seeking either victory or martyrdom, but we never expected to be detained and deprived of our families and loved ones,’ al-Bayati said.
‘It’s time Arab countries take the initiative and free all Arab prisoners from Israeli jails,’ he said.
Al-Bayati was detained in 1979 off the Nahariya coast in northern Israel while attempting to carry out a military operation.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1999 and deported to the Gaza Strip.
He married a Palestinian woman and was granted Palestinian citizenship. He was allowed to travel to Jordan for medical treatment when he fell ill.
‘My sister came to visit me in hospital. As she walked past my bed, she did not recognise me, and I heard her asking a doctor whether Ali al-Bayati arrived from Palestine.
‘I called out to her and told her I am Ali. At the beginning I thought she was my mother.’
He contacted the Iraqi embassy in Jordan and asked to return to Iraq, but the embassy insisted he must give up his Palestinian citizenship, which he refused to do.
In December 2012, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki granted al-Bayati Iraqi citizenship.
Meanwhile, little information could be found about Fuad al-Shari, from Irbid in Jordan.
Al-Shari was abducted by Israeli Mossad agents on a ship in 1991 and accused of masterminding a military operation in Israel.
He was released in 1998 and died of cirrhosis aged 54 in a hospital in Jordan.
• Truck drivers went on strike at the border between the West Bank and Jordan on Monday in protest over new Israeli restrictions.
The drivers stopped work between 8.00am and 11.00am at the Allenby Bridge crossing because Israeli authorities have reduced the number of trucks allowed to cross into Jordan, from 120 to 45 each day, the head of the drivers’ union told Ma’an.
Sultan Hadad said the restrictions have led to huge losses for traders and drivers. Traders lose 300 Jordanian dinars ($424) for every truck that is denied passage, Hadad said.
On Sunday, Israel only allowed 22 trucks to enter Jordan, he added.
Truck driver Hazem Hamdan said he often waited at the border from 8.00am to 10.00pm before leaving without being allowed to cross the border.
Hamdan said drivers would announce a general strike if the situation does not improve.