Arab League member nations Egypt and Jordan were the only delegations named to the working group established to promote the Beirut/Riyadh initiative.

Jordanian King Abdullah II met today in Amman with Israeli Knesset Speaker and Acting President Dahlia Itzik and seven other Knesset Ministers.  The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports,

An official statement from the royal court stressed that the Knesset delegation had been invited to Jordan as part of diplomatic activity that the king has taken upon himself in order to renew the peace process under the guidelines of the Arab peace plan.

Jordanian King Abdullah II wasted no time following up the establishment of the working group and its mission.  This is an encouraging, and long-overdue start toward establishing the diplomatic mechanism necessary to build upon the Arab League's initiative. 

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni issued a statement urging...,

"Those Arab countries, with whom we don't have relations, could be a party to such a process from the start, instead of setting conditions," Livni said, according to a statement issued by her office.

Livni is likely referencing comments issued from Cairo upon the establishment of Arab League initiative working groups by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal,

[Egypt and Jordan] would try to "initiate direct talks with Israel, call on the Israeli government and all Israelis to accept the Arab peace initiative and to take this chance to resume the direct and serious talks on all levels," al-Faisal later told a press conference.

But before critics of the Israeli position accuse Livni of stalling or, at worse, rejecting the initiative "out of hand," we should recall the statement of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana from the late-March Riyadh summit urging similar flexibility,

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, on Wednesday urged Arab states to be flexible in their land-for-peace offer to Israel, warning that without a solution to the conflict, the Middle East is at risk of missing the train of human and economic development....

"The important thing is to get the negotiations started. In any negotiations there are changes in positions, because negotiations are like that," Solana told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

The Israeli response appears consistent with that of the EU, and US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack,

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the plan Israel a start.

"We've talked about it for some time, about the fact that, of course, we would like to see an initiative in which there were more participants in some form of direct dialogue, discussion with Israel," McCormack said.

"You want to get the point where you start expanding out that group of countries that can have some form of diplomatic interaction with Israel. So we would view this as a first step in that regard," he said.

Bottom line, the sooner Israelis and Arab League member nations are seated together at the negotiating table, the better.  And the more, the merrier.

 

Israeli news daily Ha'aretz reports that the Olmert government will be following Wednesday's meeting of Arab League delegations in Cairo to organize the working group to engage the Quartet for Middle East Peace:

Olmert told the cabinet prior to his meeting with Abbas that he was "willing to hold a dialog with any grouping of Arab states about their ideas," an apparent nod toward the Saudi initiative....

On Saturday, government sources said Israel was waiting for the official appointment of the Arab League committee this week. "If its goal is to further the Saudi initiative, then from our point of view, it is possible to engage in dialogue with it," one source said.

Meanwhile, Yediot Ahronot reports of a conversation from two weeks ago between Egyptian and Israeli Foreign Ministers, Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Tzipi Livni, respectively, about the dynamics of the Arab League initiative, and the prospects for the way forward, backward or sideways:

Before the Passover holiday Livni told Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit that Israel wants to study the Arab League committees’ mandate to advance regional dialogue prior to announcing its willingness to participate in the meetings.

Aboul Gheit, for his part, said Saturday that the Arab League workgroups might contact the Israelis, but he did not expect any negotiations.

"These groups are not mandated to negotiate and I do not imagine that they will negotiate on behalf of anyone, whether the Palestinians, Syria or Lebanon," he said.

The mission of the working groups would be to "lay out the political idea behind the Arab effort and explain what is meant by land for peace," the minister added.