Agence France-Presse
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will hold his first summit with an Arab head of state Sunday in talks with President Hosni Mubarak that will be a likely precursor to a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The summit in Sharm El-Sheikh will be Olmert s first opportunity to explain to the Egyptian president his controversial plan to fix the final borders of the Jewish state in the course of his four-year term of office, even without agreement from the Palestinians. Olmert received qualified approval for his plan from U.S. President George W. Bush during talks at the White House last month but commentators do not expect him to receive any kind of green light from Mubarak, who has come to play an increasingly prominent role as a mediator in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. After a long chill in relations between the two neighbors, bilateral relations between Israel and Egypt have been on the upturn as shown by Mubarak s hosting of a summit in Sharm El-Sheikh in February last year between Abbas and Olmert s now coma-stricken predecessor Ariel Sharon. Although Abbas has yet to be accorded an audience with Olmert, Sharm El-Sheikh was also the venue for a recent meeting between the moderate Palestinian Authority president and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Announcing the summit last Sunday, Egyptian presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad made clear that the talks would focus on ways in which to push forward the peace efforts in preparation for a three-way summit with Abbas. A senior Israeli government official said Olmert was happy for Mubarak to play a leading role in the peace process, adding that both men had a common interest in dealing with the rise to power of the Islamist group Hamas, which now governs the Palestinian Authority after winning elections in January. Mubarak is regarded by Israel as a force for moderation who can contribute to the renewal of direct contacts with the Palestinians, said a senior Israeli official on condition of anonymity. Since Hamas victory, the Egyptians are worried that the chaos in Gaza is going to spill over into their territory. That s why they prefer the option of dialogue, which can reduce tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. Olmert gave a commitment to Bush that he would exhaust every effort to reach an agreement with Abbas but said Hamas must recognize Israel s right to exist and renounce violence as a precondition for any peace deal. We will not give a terrorist regime a veto over progress, he said in an address to Congress. According to Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Israel s Haaretz daily, Mubarak will be happy to endorse Olmert s plan to uproot tens of thousands of settlers from the West Bank but will certainly not give him the nod to redraw the map of the Middle East by annexing large housing blocs. Mubarak will say to Olmert: You can evacuate the settlements but you can t fix the borders , Eldar told AFP. Livni received a similarly cool reception to the so-called realignment plan on a visit this week to Turkey, Israel s best friend in the Muslim world, in a sign of the diplomatic mountain that Olmert s government has to climb. According to Israel s Maariv daily, even U.S. diplomats recently told Israeli officials at a meeting in Jerusalem that the chances of the Americans recognizing borders which do not conform to the Green Line (1967 borders) are zero despite Bush s apparent backing for the project. Apart from the realignment plan, the summit should also be a chance for Olmert to raise concerns about control on the Rafah border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip since Israeli troops left the territory last September. The Israeli authorities are particularly worried by intelligence reports that an Al-Qaeda cell has been able to infiltrate Gaza from the neighboring Sinai Peninsula which has been the target of three major bombings in less than two years.
