Abd Rabbu and Beilin are the prominent figures of the two negotiating teams

AMMAN, October 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In what some observers see as a bid to bring down the right-wing government of Ariel Sharon, leading Israeli opposition figures and former Palestinian ministers have drawn up an "unofficial" draft peace treaty to replace the dying U.S.-backed roadmap for Mideast peace, which hit its lowest ebb ever.

The so-called Switzerland Accord, which came to light after two years of in-camera meetings supported by rights activists and Swiss diplomats, had been already finalized over the weekend during a meeting in Jordan, the BBC News Online reported Monday, October 13.

Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli Justice Minister, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian Information Minister, were part of the "peace group," who drafted the alternative peace pact set to be signed in Switzerland in two weeks' time.

An Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 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, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The full details of the plan are due to be released when the initiative is formally adopted in Geneva next month.

Haim Oron, a Member of Knesset of Israeli Meretz Party, revealed 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.

The Palestinians are also expected to get sovereignty over one of the most disputed religious sites in the Middle East, Al-Aqsa Mosque.

However, former Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Hisham Abd al-Raziq, who is one of the Palestinian negotiating team, was quoted in the Al-Quds newspaper as saying that the draft did not include a Palestinian concession on the right of return.

Vitriolic Reaction

"I wouldn't have expected anything else from the people who gave us the Oslo accords," Shalom

But the right-wing Israeli government Ministers hit out at the plan, with Sharon accusing the left-wing opposition of trying to topple his government.

"There is a roadmap, and it is not helpful to make people think there might be something else," Sharon told the Jerusalem Post.

That sentiment was echoed by Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom.

"I wouldn't have expected anything else from the people who gave us the Oslo accords - we're still paying for them today," the Israeli press quoted him as alluding to Beilin, who was a key player in the drawing up of the Oslo accords.

Education Minister Limor Livnat took the same line, saying: "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."

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

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ihud Barak told Israel Radio he was sorry that the Labor Party had permitted some of its members to formulate such a "delusional" peace plan.

"This is a fictive and slightly peculiar agreement... that clearly harms the interests
of the State of Israel," Ha’aretz quoted Barak as saying.