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Ex-officials: Netanyahu nixed secret peace deal
Israeli leader cited lack of support in hard-line coalition
JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister turned down a regional peace initiative last year that was brokered by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, former American officials confirmed Sunday, in apparent contradiction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of involving regional Arab powers in resolving Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu took part in a secret summit that Kerry organized in the southern Jordanian port city of Aqaba last February and included Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah elSissi. The secret meeting was first reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
According to two former Obama administration officials, Kerry proposed regional recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — a key Netanyahu demand — alongside a renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries.
Netanyahu rejected the offer, which would have required a significant pullout from occupied land, saying he would not be able to garner enough support for it in his hard-line coalition government.
The initiative also appeared to be the basis of short-lived talks with moderate opposition leader Isaac Herzog to join the government, a plan that quickly unraveled when Netanyahu chose to bring in nationalist leader Avigdor Lieberman instead and appoint him defense minister.
Herzog tweeted Sunday that “history will definitely judge the magnitude of the opportunity as well as the magnitude of the missed opportunity.”
Two former top aides to Kerry confirmed that the meeting took place secretly on Feb. 21, 2016. According to the officials, Kerry tried to sweeten the 15-year-old “Arab Peace Initiative,” a Saudi-led plan that offered Israel peace with dozens of Arab and Muslim nations in return for a pullout from territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war to make way for an independent Palestine.
Among the proposed changes were Arab recognition of Israel as the Jewish state, recognition of Jerusalem as a shared capital for Israelis and Palestinians, and softened language on the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees to lost properties in what is now Israel, the former officials said.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret meeting publicly, said the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders reacted positively to the proposal, while Netanyahu refused to commit to anything beyond meetings with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. One of the officials said the main purpose of the meeting was to start a regional peace process that Netanyahu said he wanted. However, he said it was not clear if the Arab states would have gone along with it.
He said it appeared that Netanyahu was not interested in more than meeting Abbas and some Arab leaders and promising unspecified confidence-building steps. This was not enough for anyone at the meeting and would not have been enough to get other Arab states to even express willingness to pursue a regional approach, the former official said.
President Donald Trump last week asked Netanyahu to “hold off ” on Jewish settlement construction in occupied territories the Palestinians claim for a future state. Netanyahu said Sunday that the sides have formed joint teams to coordinate settlement construction.
In a striking departure from longtime American policy, Trump also refrained from supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Lieberman, the Israeli defense minister, said that for him a Palestinian state remains the preferred outcome — and it should come through the type of regional structure Netanyahu reportedly rejected.