Netanyahu admits he attended secret peace summit last year
One year ago to the day, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sat down with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Jordanian King Abdullah and then US Secretary of State John Kerry. The idea was to convene a regional summit that would restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz first reported the story of the summit this week, which was then confirmed by Netanyahu, who also said it was his idea, rather than John Kerry’s. The chances of reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, however, fizzled after Palestinian officials refused Netanyahu’s demands.
The report was yet another example of how Israel has become enamored of the idea of some kind of regional peace deal. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog confirmed the details of a proposed peace deal and said he and Netanyahu discussed a unity government between Netanyahu’s Likud and Herzog’s Zionist Union party. Herzog would become Foreign Minister in charge of the initiative.
According to Herzog, the deal included an Israeli promise to stop building Jewish settlements in most of the West Bank in exchange for construction in what are called “settlement blocs”, areas that Israel hopes to hold onto even after a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Herzog charged Netanyahu with retreating from the process under pressure from hardliners within his Likud party.
“What happened was amazing,” Herzog told a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. “I worked with Netanyahu on a draft appendix to our agreement, which had included certain steps that were quite dramatic. Had these steps been agreed upon, namely, had he agreed at the end to go for it, it would have changed the region.”
He said that a renewed peace process would have meant that December’s UN Security Council resolution harshly criticizing Israel for settlement building, would not have passed.
“History will judge Netanyahu on that failure, unfortunately,” he said.
Other Israeli officials said the fact that the summit even happened shows that Arab states in the region have changed their attitude toward Israel for the better.
“This meeting shows that there is some readiness in the wider Middle East to speak with Israel, to negotiate with Israel, to reconcile with the Jewish state. And this is very important,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told The Media Line.
The idea of a regional peace initiative goes back to 2002, when Saudi Arabia offered Israel peace with dozens of Arab and Muslim states in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem and a “just” solution for the issue of Palestinian refugees. The plan was overshadowed by a terrorist attack at a Passover seder in a hotel in Netanyahu that killed 30 people.
In their meeting last week, Netanyahu and Trump discussed the possibility of focusing on some kind of regional peace in the face of a common threat from Iran. On their way to Israel, members of the Conference of Presidents stopped in Egypt and Morocco.
In Egypt they met Egyptian President Sisi, who said he values the close security ties he has with Israel. Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and growing commercial and security ties with other Arab countries especially those in the Gulf.
“Sisi spoke a great deal about the model of Anwar Sadat (the Egyptian president assassinated in 1981 after he signed a peace treaty with Israel) which I had not heard from him before,” Richard Stone, a NY-based attorney and former chairman of the Conference of Presidents told The Media Line. “He said that Sadat had sacrificed himself for the ideal of doing good instead of evil, to make things better for Egypt and the world.”
Sisi said that while Iran is the main threat, other organizations including Islamic State and Boko Haram in Nigeria, also pose a threat.
In Morocco, the group met senior officials including the Prime Minister and were even hosted for a kosher dinner at the royal palace.
“The King is remarkable in so many ways and has shown his personal commitment (to Jews),” Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference told The Media Line. “He came to the rededication of a 500 year old synagogue (in Marrakesh) and he found out the names of the streets in the Jewish quarter had been changed when the Jews left. He ordered they all be returned to their Jewish names.