Palestinians print peace ad in Israel press

JERUSALEM The PLO took the unprecedented step of placing advertisements in Israeli newspapers on Thursday to promote a six-year-old Arab peace plan for the region.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organisation published the full-page notices in Hebrew in four major dailies. They described the Arab plan, which was first proposed in 2002 but has long found little interest from Israel.

“Fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries will establish diplomatic ties and normal relations with Israel in return for a full peace agreement and an end to the occupation,” the text read, under Palestinian and Israel flags set side by side.

Senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said the campaign was meant to inform Israelis about the peace initiative, which until now has been “misinterpreted by the extreme Israeli right wing as an Arab conspiracy against Israel and its future.”

The Arab League proposal offers Israel peace and normal relations with all Arab countries in return for its withdrawal from all territory the Jewish state captured in the 1967 Middle East war — the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.