By DPA
Jerusalem : An Arab League delegation will visit Israel for peace talks later this month, the first visit in more than half a century since the foundation of both the Arab League and Israel.
The delegates – including the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan – are scheduled to visit July 25, an Israel foreign ministry spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
The meeting will focus on the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offers all-round Arab recognition of Israel in return for a full withdrawal from the West Bank and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
It was first proposed at the Arab League summit in Beirut some five years ago, but was re-launched at the latest summit in Riyadh earlier this year.
Israel has welcomed the proposal and said it was willing to discuss it with Arab League representatives, though it has expressed serious reservations about the Palestinian refugee issue.
Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert has said the Jewish state will accept no responsibility for the refugees.
Israel wants the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in neighbouring Arab states to be absorbed by a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. It does not want to absorb them within Israel.
It fears that accepting the refugees into its own territory will result in a Palestinian majority that will effectively mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state and the de-facto creation of another Palestinian state next to one in the West Bank and Gaza.
But Israeli officials have nevertheless described the offer of wide Arab recognition of Israel as "historic".
In a follow-up meeting to its earlier summit in Cairo in March, the Arab League appointed Egypt and Jordan – the only two Arab countries that have peace agreements with Israel – as its representatives for holding talks on the initiative.
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni met Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Jordanian foreign minister Abdelelah al-Khatib in Cairo in May.
The visit to Israel – the first since the state was established in 1948 – in itself represents a historic turning-point by a bloc which has traditionally been at the forefront of anti-Israel policies and sentiment. The Arab League was founded in 1945, three years before the birth of Israel.
But in her talks in Cairo, Livni insisted that any future resumption of peace negotiations would be bilateral between Israel and the Palestinians. She was expressing the standard Israeli line against Arab intervention in the negotiation process and an imposed solution.
Israel has nevertheless said that Arab League backing for any treaty can help it win acceptance.
A revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, however, has been complicated by the political infighting that has seen the Palestinian autonomous areas split into two hostile camps, one led by Hamas in Gaza and another by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah party in the West Bank.
Abbas reiterated Tuesday that he would not talk to Hamas unless it returned the situation in Gaza to the way it was before the Islamic movement's violent takeover of security installations there last month.
"We reasserted that we will not hold talks with those who carried out the coup, unless they reverse the whole situation," Abbas said in a joint news conference in Ramallah with Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, who expressed support for the Palestinian leader in his conflict with Hamas.
Abbas again stressed the need for an international force to deploy in the volatile coastal salient, but Prodi said such a force would have to be agreed on by both sides and such an agreement did not exist. Hamas vehemently opposes such a deployment and has warned the force will be greeted with rockets and mortars.
In Washington, the US state department played down the prospects of sending a United Nations force to Gaza.
"Anything that president Abbas proposes with regard to maintaining law and order, I think people have to take a look at, though I'm not sure that you're going to find too many forces wiling to go into what I expect is a non-permissive environment," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Prodi said supporting Abbas' government was crucial to show the Palestinians "there is light at the end of the tunnel" and offered the Palestinian Authority $25 million in aid.
Prime minister Salam Fayyad heads an emergency government set up by Abbas over Hamas' opposition. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Gaza continues to call himself prime minister despite his dismissal by Abbas after the Gaza fighting ended.
The two camps are heading for another showdown when the 30-day state of emergency declared by Abbas and which grants the emergency government its legitimacy expires Sunday. Under Palestinian law, the president needs approval by the Hamas-led Palestinian legislative council (PLC) to extend the emergency situation.
The PLC is slated to meet Thursday, but Hamas is expected to boycott the session.