ISRAEL/WEST BANK: U.S. secretary of state Rice arrives in region, meets Palestinian President in West Bank

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel on Sunday (March 25) ahead of an Arab summit expected in Saudi Arabia this week. Rice landed in Israel's international Ben Gurion Airport and drove to the West Bank city of Ramallah to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She is also expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday (March 26). Analysts and Palestinian officials said that Arab leaders will resist U.S. and Israeli pressure to alter a 2002 land-for-peace offer to Israel they plan to relaunch at a summit in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Arab diplomats said the March 28-29 summit would send Israel and the United States a message that the Arab world is ready to make peace if the Jewish state met its minimal demands. Washington's renewed interest in reviving Arab-Israeli peace talks coincides with its efforts to enlist Arab allies in its campaign to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions -- a quest hampered by deep Arab hostility to the Iraq war and U.S. support for Israel. Israel and the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement both rejected the Saudi-drafted plan when it was adopted unanimously at an Arab summit in 2002. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently said it contains "positive elements". It offers full peace with Israel if it withdraws from all Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, accepts a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, and reaches an "agreed, just solution" for refugees. Hamas, by contrast, has vowed never to recognise Israel, abandon a right of return for refugees or accept more than a long-term truce with the Jewish state within its 1967 borders. Olmert, Israeli analysts say, wants Arab states to sit down with Israel before the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved and to soften their conditions for peace in advance.

ITN Source | March 25, 2007

Tags:. .region. .positive. .minister. .middle. .message