Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah called on Wednesday for an end to the international blockade on the Palestinian government to help revive efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict at the heart of the region’s problems.
Addressing the Arab summit in Riyadh, world and Muslim leaders offered support for a 2002 Arab peace plan being revived at the two-day meeting and echoed the king’s call for Arabs to unite to end sectarian violence driving Iraq toward civil war.
“It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force,” King Abdullah said at the opening of the summit.
Saudi Arabia last month brokered a unity government between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas, hoping it would help end a crippling Western blockade imposed after the Islamist group took office over a year ago.
Israel and the United States have urged countries to cut political and financial support for the Palestinians because Hamas, which leads the government, refuses to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace deals.
Israel insists it will not release tax money and other aid to Gaza and the West Bank, but some countries have agreed to talk to non-Hamas members of the government and increase aid.
Tense relations in region
The Arab summit comes against a tense regional backdrop, with fears high among Arab leaders that a U.S.-led attack on non-Arab Iran, which has refused to comply with U.N. demands to halt atomic work, could further destabilize their region.
Riyadh, pressed by its ally Washington to show more leadership in the region, has called on Sunni Muslim states to overcome divisions, arguing a united front will help persuade Israel to address Palestinian grievances.
Arab leaders agreed on Wednesday to revive their initiative, which offers Israel normal ties in return for its full withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 war, Jamal Shobaki, the Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh told Reuters.
Arabs hope more international backing for the plan this time around will help restart the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process.
“The Arab peace initiative is one of the pillars for the peace process ... This initiative sends a signal that the Arabs are serious about achieving peace,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in an address, according to an Arabic translation.
Harsh criticism of U.S.
Violence in Iraq is also a key focus of the summit, with King Abdullah stressing that Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq threatened the stability of the oil-producing Gulf region.
“In beloved Iraq, blood flows between brothers in the shadow of illegitimate foreign occupation and hateful sectarianism, threatening a civil war,” he said, in unusually strong criticism of the U.S. presence in Iraq from a strong ally.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said the summit resolutions would include a call by Iraq’s government for all militia to disband and for the constitution to be revised.
Crises in Sudan and Lebanon are also under discussion.
But with no end in sight to a standoff between Lebanon’s Western-backed government and Hezbollah-led opposition, the summit text will only express general backing for Lebanon and a tribunal to try suspects in the murder of its ex-prime minister.
The Arab-Israeli dispute, at the heart of the region’s problems, will dominate resolutions to be endorsed on Thursday.
Draft calls for a ‘just solution’
Israel has objected to key elements in the plan, including the proposed return to 1967 borders, the inclusion of Arab East Jerusalem in a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees to homes in what is now Israel.
A final draft resolution calls for a “just solution” to the problem of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948 but avoids any mention of the phrase “right of return.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged leaders not to compromise on the right of refugees to return to homes lost in the turmoil surrounding the creation of the Israeli state.
But Israel’s deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, said in a statement: “We have some disagreements on a number of issues. The question is how to overcome them, by coercion and force or via negotiation.
“They can bring their positions and we will bring ours, and we can reach an agreement as we did with Egypt and Jordan.”