KSA prince, Israeli min. met at Munich confab: Report

Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief Turki bin Faisal and Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni have exchanged words during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, a report says.

Livni’s office confirmed on Sunday that the Saudi prince had asked her about the 2002 Arab initiative, presented by Saudi Arabia, during a question and answer session at the end of the panel on the so-called peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority on Friday, the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post reported.

Livni said for her part that she viewed the Arab initiative as a “positive” development.
According to the original 2002 Arab initiative, Arab states would have “diplomatic ties” with the Israeli regime in exchange for a “complete [Israeli] withdrawal” from the territories occupied since the 1967 war. It also called for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland.

The Saudi-brokered initiative has re-emerged in recent months as a prospective framework for a US-sponsored deal between the Israel regime and the Palestinian Authority despite being ignored in the past decade.

The report comes as the US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which resumed in July 2013, have failed to make significant progress due to substantial disagreements.

Israel’s settlement expansion policy is one of the sticking points in the talks.
Palestinians demand that East al-Quds (Jerusalem) be their capital and that Israel recognize borders based on the 1967 lines which existed before the Six-Day War, when Israel captured the West Bank and East al-Quds.

Tel Aviv refuses to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.
Israel also wants to keep its military presence in the Jordan Valley under any deal, but the Palestinians say an international force should be stationed there to guarantee security.