The few Russian tourists who visited the Grand Park Hotel in Antalya, Turkey, on Dec. 17-19, despite the tensions between Moscow and Ankara, could not have known that the women and men conversing easily at adjacent tables represent an occupier and the occupied. Anyone following the deterioration in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue would have found it hard to believe that these men and women came to Antalya to look together for ways to save the two-state solution, using the Arab Peace Initiative. After breakfast they took their places around a long rectangular table in one of the meeting rooms.

Next to them at the table were also two Knesset members from the Zionist Camp and one from the Meretz Party. Present, too, was a former member of the Palestinian Cabinet, clerics from the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, a senior Arab League diplomat and three other diplomats — an American, a European and a Turk. For participants to express their views freely, the hosts from the API Regional Network asked everyone to avoid publicizing each other's names and quoting them directly. Therefore, the insights from the conference will not be attributed to specific participants.

The first insight: The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative is in force. It is likely to be ratified at the upcoming 2016 Arab League conference in Morocco in March. Despite Israel’s refusal to adopt the initiative and to even discuss it, important Arab states — led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are still on board and are unwilling to amend its principles. Nonetheless, in light of the instability in Syria and uncertainty regarding its future, implementation of the article about normalizing relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal to the 1967 border lines is not conditional on its withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Suffice it for Israel to adopt the principles of the initiative — along with its willingness for land swaps in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — to launch steps for the normalization of ties with states such as Saudi Arabia.

The Arabs find it hard to understand why such a generous peace initiative is unable to capture the hearts of the Jewish-Israeli public. Among the centrist and left-wing Zionist parties there is a broad consensus in immediate recognition of the establishment of a Palestinian state, based on the June 4, 1967, lines. There is agreement that Israel must accept its responsibility for the refugee problem, including that of the 1948 refugees uprooted from their villages and lives in Israel, and toward efforts to resolve it — without full implementation of the right of return. According to the views of the Zionist Camp and Meretz representatives, dramatic gestures the likes of the Jerusalem visit by late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977 will make it easier for them to sell the initiative as part of a made-in-Israel diplomatic plan. Nonetheless, in their view, the road to regional peace goes through the ballot boxes. For a leader to implement a policy toward a comprehensive arrangement and an end to the conflict, the leader must convince the public that handing the West Bank over to the Palestinians will not turn it into a second Gaza. Therefore, it is essential to establish a regional-international security mechanism that will reduce the threat of a hostile takeover of Palestine by Hamas or other external forces.