Israeli opposition, Palestinians talk alternative peace plan

Beilin and Abed Rabbo met with President Hosni Mubarak's top advisor Osama al-Baz and were later due to meet with Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, an Egyptian official said.

The initiative by MPs from the opposition Labour and Meretz parties to parley with prominent Palestinians at a time when the peace process is at its lowest ebb has rankled a hardline government that has ditched the Oslo accords in the face of three years of renewed Intifada.

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Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister, and Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian information minister, were part of a group which met in Jordan over the weekend to draft a peace pact they plan to sign in Switzerland in two weeks.

Beilin was closely involved with the Oslo accords.

Participants in the Jordan meeting have yet to reveal the full contents of their plan, saying they will do so only when it has been formally adopted in Geneva later this month.

But Meretz MP Haim Oron insisted it contained serious concessions from both sides, including an acceptance by the Palestinians that Israel was a Jewish state and that there could be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Meanwhile, right-wing Israeli government ministers hit out yesterday at an alternative Middle East peace plan drawn up by leading doves at a three-day meeting in Jordan over the weekend.

"The Israelis who put their names to the plan are marginal people who represent nobody but themselves and who paid the price for that at the last elections," said Education Minister Limor Livnat.

She was alluding to the meeting's leading Israeli participant, former justice minister Yossi Beilin, who masterminded the Oslo accords but lost his seat in January after joining the dovish Meretz party.

"These people are the playthings of (Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat," Livnat told public radio.

"They're sending the message that despite the generous peace proposals of (then Labour prime minister) Ehud Barak at the (2000) Camp David summit, (Arafat) was right to resort to terrorism and that they are prepared to reward him with new concessions."

Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom echoed her attack, both on Beilin and the peace plan.

"I wouldn't have expected anything else from the people who gave us the Oslo accords -- we're still paying for them today," he told Israeli dailies.

"We have a government in Israel and it is its prerogative to handle these matters ... Everything else is just hot air."

The initiative by MPs from the opposition Labour and Meretz parties to parley with prominent Palestinians at a time when the peace process is at its lowest ebb has rankled a hardline government that has ditched the Oslo accords in the face of three years of renewed intifada.

Last week Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused the Israeli doves of "going behind his back" and acting without any authority.

Participants in the Jordan meeting have yet to reveal the full contents of their plan, saying they will do so only when it has been formally adopted in Geneva later this month.

But Meretz MP Haim Oron insisted it contained serious concessions from both sides, including an acceptance by the Palestinians that Israel was a Jewish state and that there could be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.

And Palestinian MP Fares Kadura vowed to work to ensure that the plan was more than a mere academic exercise.

"We are ready to campaign to win support for this plan on the Palestinian street because we want better life and we believe we've found a way to achieve it," Kadura told the radio.