(IsraelNN.com) In the course of recent negotiations, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asked the head of the Palestinian Authority's negotiating team, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), to accept Israel as a Jewish state, reminding him that it was accepted as such by UN Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, for the partition of the Land of Israel.

According to Ahmed Tibi, a member of Israel's Knesset who used to be an aide to PLO founder Yasser Arafat, Abu Ala answered: "let us implement [Resolution] 181 first and we shall talk." Tibi recorded the exchange in an article he wrote for Arab newspaper Kul el-Arab.

Amru Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League said late Thursday night that the Arab countries will not offer Israel "normalization for free."

"There is no such thing as normalization for free," Moussa told reporters after a meeting of 11 Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo. The Arab League countries were invited by the U.S. to participate in the Annapolis summit next week. "Arabs are going to participate in the (Annapolis) meeting, to show support for the Palestinians, based on the Arab peace initiative," he explained.

UN Partition Plan, 1947 (Resolution 181).

UN Resolution 181 delineated a two state solution for Jews and Arabs west of the Jordan river. Both states were to be joined by an economic union and share joint currency. The resolution declared that Arabs and Jews would become "citizens of the State in which they are resident and enjoy full civil and political rights" a
The City of Jerusalem was to be demilitarized and placed under a special international regime.
nd that Arabs living in the Jewish state could opt, within one year from the date of the resolution's implementation, for citizenship of the Arab state, and Jews living in the Arab state could opt for citizenship of the Jewish state.

Demilitarized Jerusalem Under the UN
The Jewish State was to receive the eastern Galilee from the Hulah Basin and the Sea of Galilee in the northeast to the crest of the Gilboa mountains in the south. The Jewish section of the coastal plain "extends from a point between Minat El-Qila and Nabi Yunis in the Gaza Sub-District and includes the towns of Haifa and Tel-Aviv, leaving Jaffa as an enclave of the Arab State." The Jews were also to receive the Negev area, but without the city of Beersheva, and a strip of land along the Dead Sea.

The City of Jerusalem was to be demilitarized and placed under a special international regime, to be administered by the United Nations through a "trusteeship council."

The Arab leadership refused to accept the partition plan in 1947 and opted, instead, for military annihilation of the Jews. Their plan failed and the State of Israel was born, with the Jews carving out a more favorable map for themselves by military means.