[Facts] Peace process

DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)

The current crisis cannot be seen apart from the long struggle for a just solution to the crisis in the Middle East. Here are some of the milestones in the decades-long peace process and the challenges that still lie ahead.

Major issues

How far apart are Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on some of the biggest issues? Here are some of the major sticking points.

* Security

Israel has said that no agreement will be implemented until the Palestinians dismantle militant groups. Palestinians say Israeli occupation in the West Bank hinders their efforts. Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, oppose the new talks.

* Borders

Olmert has privately expressed willingness to give up "90-something" percent of the West Bank territory, and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip, as part of a final peace deal, Western officials say.

They say Olmert is likely to offer at least 92 percent of the West Bank, with a land swap to compensate the Palestinians for Jewish settlement blocs that would be part of Israel. The officials say they believe Olmert is prepared to offer Israeli land equivalent to between 4 and 6 percent of the West Bank in exchange for the major settlement blocs.

Israel wants to be compensated in territory for a 35-km (20-mile) corridor of land that would connect the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. It is unclear how much land this would entail or whether this would be part of the exchange for the settlement blocs.

Abbas has demanded the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a land area he says totals 6,205 sq. km. (2,396 sq. miles). That is how much Palestinian territory Abbas estimates Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Abbas has also raised the possibility of amending the pre-1967 lines. Palestinian officials say Abbas may be willing to accept a 1.5-to-2 percent land swap, provided the end result is a state on 6,205 sq. km. of territory.

* Occupied Jerusalem

Abbas is demanding that Arab East Jerusalem be the capital of any future Palestinian state. West Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel. Israel at present regards all of Jerusalem as its capital but this is not recognized internationally.

One of the biggest sticking points is how to administer the Old City, site of Judaism's Western Wall and Islam's al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, as well as Christian holy sites.

One of Olmert's closest confidants, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, said Israel should in future negotiate creation of a "special regime" that would govern the Old City's sacred sites.

In a proposal to end the conflict in December 2000, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton called for Palestinian sovereignty over the area where al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock stand. Israel would have sovereignty over the Western Wall.

There would be an international monitoring system.

* Refugees

Ramon said Olmert's government would not allow a formal "right of return" for millions of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel. But Ramon said some Palestinians could ask to settle in Israel on humanitarian grounds.

Israel wants Abbas to give up the "right of return" in exchange for Israeli concessions on Jerusalem and borders.

Abbas has pointed to language on the right of return in U.N. resolutions and an Arab League peace plan as possible models.

First launched in 2002, the Arab initiative calls on Israel to reach an "agreed and just" solution for Palestinian refugees based on U.N. Resolution 194, which calls for the return of refugees -- and compensation for those who do not return.

Arab peace proposal

Here are some facts about the Arab peace plan, which was proposed by Saudi Arabia and later adopted unanimously at an Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002.

- It calls on Israel to withdraw from all Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war; reach an "agreed, just" solution for Palestinian refugees in line with U.N. Resolution 194; and accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital.

- In return, Arab states will consider the conflict over and will enter a peace treaty with Israel; achieve comprehensive peace for all the states of the region; and establish normal relations with Israel.

- Resolution 194, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948 after the war that followed Israel's creation, resolves that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return..."

- Israel paid little attention to the Arab initiative at the time. The Beirut summit coincided with a major suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Netanya, which prompted the military reoccupation of much of the West Bank and a siege of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah.

- Israeli leaders have recently said the Arab plan has positive elements but that other aspects -- including the proposed return to 1967 borders, the status of Jerusalem and how to deal with Palestinian refugees -- are "problematic".

- The Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement has not accepted the plan in full because it conflicts with its ultimate aim of an Islamic state. Hamas leaders have offered only a long-term truce with Israel inside its 1967 borders.

- The Arab plan was mentioned as a foundation for peace in the "road map" announced by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations in April 2003.

US-brokered peacemaking events

Here are some major efforts at U.S. Middle East peacemaking.

* Sept. 5-17, 1978 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin meet President Jimmy Carter for closed-door negotiations at Camp David in Maryland on a framework for Middle East peace. Talks lead to the first peace treaty between Israel and any of its neighbors, signed on March 26, 1979, and sealed with a handshake on the White House lawn.

* Sept. 13, 1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat shake hands in public for the first time, at the White House with U.S. President Bill Clinton looking on. The handshake sealed the signing of a Declaration of Principles for Arab-Israeli peace.

* Sept. 28, 1995 - Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip is signed in Washington. After signing, Clinton hosts a summit attended by King Hussein of Jordan, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Rabin and Arafat.

* Oct. 15-23, 1998 - Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Arafat meet at the Wye River conference center on Maryland's Eastern Shore. An all-night session results in agreement on the Wye River Memorandum, signed at the White House on Oct. 23, which spells out how to implement the 1995 agreement.

* Dec. 15-16, 1999 - Clinton meets Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara at the White House, then the United States mediates talks at Blair House, in the highest-level negotiations between the two countries.

* Jan. 3-10, 2000 - Clinton joins Barak and Shara several times to help mediate peace talks in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Another round of negotiations is postponed after disagreement over the fate of a few hundred square yards (square meters) of land by the Sea of Galilee.

* July 11-25, 2000 - Clinton holds a summit with Barak and Arafat at Camp David. Marathon meetings collapse without agreement on a framework accord on final status issues.

* Nov. 27, 2007 - At an international conference in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted by President George W. Bush, Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledge to try to reach a peace deal by the end of 2008. The promise is met with some skepticism due partly to the previous hands-off policy to peacemaking that Bush had mostly adhered to for seven years since taking office.