Lapid and Saudi prince powwow about regional peace summit

NEW YORK — Yair Lapid, chairman of the opposition Yesh Atid party, met with a prominent member of the Saudi royal family in New York on Tuesday night for a discussion that spanned issues of regional diplomacy and security, including a peace plan being advanced by him, Lapid said Wednesday. Speaking with members of the Israel Policy Forum in New York, Lapid said that he and Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud had discussed the possibility of a regional summit to kick off serious consideration of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative.

Al-Saud, a former director of Saudi intelligence and a former ambassador to the US, met with Lapid on the evening prior to a landmark speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas told participants in the United Nations’ General Assembly General Debate that the Palestinians would no longer be bound by the Oslo Accords.

Lapid said that his regional peacemaking efforts draw upon lessons learned from Israel’s experience in fighting, and failing to avert, the recent nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran.

“The lesson Israel must learn in hindsight is that if you don’t offer a solution, and only say why the solution doesn’t work, you’ll end up with a solution you don’t like,” he warned.

Lapid said that he does not see the move toward the Saudi initiative as a way to bypass bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“We’re not giving up on the bilateral talks — there will be three tables,” he suggested. “The bilateral talks will be at the center, so to speak, and then there will be multilateral talks about issues like Gaza. In the middle you would have an international administrative table that will go between the parties.” He stressed that he hoped that such talks could take place not in a European capital like Vienna, but rather in an Arab capital, suggesting Riyadh or Cairo as options.

Since announcing last week that he believed Israel should accept the Arab Peace Initiative put forward in 2002 by Saudi Arabia, Lapid said, he had visited a number of key players in efforts to advance a regional summit — with or without the support of the Netanyahu administration.

“Last night in New York, I meant with Turki al-Faisal – discussing the regional summit and the possibilities that we can explore together in a regional process. Tomorrow I will go to Washington and discuss this with members of Congress and the administration,” he detailed.

“What we are doing now as opposition is putting down the infrastructure,” said Lapid, who has indicated he wishes to be elected Israel’s next prime minister, explaining that he hopes to place pressure on the government to consider the proposal. Last week, he spoke about the plan with Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende, whose country heads the donor’s conference for the Palestinian Authority, and with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who Lapid said is known “to have great relations with the Saudis.”

“You are like a spider who is sewing something gradually,” he elaborated, stepping back from the idea that a summit would be forthcoming any time soon. “This has been a conflict for 100 and some years now; I wish I could say [the summit would happen in] two days. It’s a long process, but this is my life mission,” he added.

Philip Gordon, the former special assistant to the US president and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, who shared the stage with Lapid, suggested that the United States might not be satisfied with a purely regional approach.

“I would say that the regional approach is necessary but not sufficient,” Gordon warned. “I agree with every argument why it is a positive approach…but its not sufficient if anyone thinks it can be a way to get around the direct negotiations with the Palestinians that need to happen.”

Gordon stressed that the failed attempt by Secretary of State John Kerry to broker peace talks in 2013-2014 had shown the US that “the prerequisite for this to work is an Israeli prime minister and Palestinian leader who are genuinely interested in having talks succeed.” In the previous iteration, he said, administration officials had the sense that Netanyahu was in the talks due to US pressure, and that Abbas was engaged solely to secure the release of prisoners.

Lapid, however, maintained his insistence on a regional structure. As he did in a speech earlier this month at Bar Ilan University, Lapid argued that it is a fortuitous juncture for such overtures — that the timing represented a convergence of interests. While Israel sought normalization of economic and diplomatic relations, the same normalization, he argued, would allow Israel to participate in joint regional struggles against common enemies such as Iran and the Islamic State.

At the same time, Lapid stressed Wednesday that the Arab Initiative was far from perfect and should merely serve as a framework for talks. “The Saudi initiative has problematic clauses that I cannot accept,” Lapid added, perhaps alluding to clauses referring to the partitioning of Jerusalem and the possible resettlement of Palestinian refugees.

Last week Lapid said Israel should accept the Arab Peace Initiative, put forward in 2002 by Saudi Arabia, as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinians and the Arab world. In a lengthy foreign policy speech, Lapid lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a “failed diplomatic policy,” and said it was unacceptable that Israel had yet to respond to the plan in the 13 years since it was first proposed by Saudi King Abdullah.

Like Netanyahu, Lapid said a future Palestinian state must be demilitarized, but did not go into details on contentious issues such as the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Jerusalem, and control over holy sites.

Lapid has announced that he will challenge Netanyahu for the premiership in the next elections, which he said Wednesday he expected would be called for November 2016.

First adopted by the Arab League in 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative has become a hot political commodity again since the organization mentioned for the first time the possibility of mutual agreed land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians. The move was widely understood as a nod to changed realities on the ground that would allow Israel to retain major settlement blocs in the West Bank in a future final-status agreement.

Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.