A senior Qatari official has said Israel and the Palestinians could trade land rather than conform exactly to their 1967 borders in what appears to be a softening of Arab states’ stance on the 2002 peace plan.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, made the comment on Monday after he and a group of Arab officials met US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss how to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Speaking on behalf of an Arab League delegation, Sheikh Hamad appeared to make a concession to Israel by explicitly raising the possibility of land swaps. However, it has long been assumed that these would be part of any peace agreement.
“This news is very positive,” Tzipi Livni, the Israeli justice minister, told Army Radio on Tuesday.
“In the tumultuous world around … it could allow the Palestinians to enter the room and make the needed compromises and it sends a message to the Israeli public that this is not just about us and the Palestinians.”
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters the Arab League delegation understood that “peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis is … a strategic choice for the Arab states”.
