"There is a real possibility that Israel can sign a global peace accord with its enemies within five years," Olmert said in an interview with the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot.

Asked whether he meant "all of the Arab world," Olmert said "yes."

The interviews with several Israel's leading dailies ahead of the Passover holiday were published after Arab leaders revived a five-year-old peace plan for comprehensive peace in the Middle East at a Riyadh summit.

The blueprint offers Israel full normalisation of relations if it withdraws from all land occupied in the 1967 war and allows the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

"A bloc of states is emerging that understands that they may have been wrong to think that Israel is the world's greatest problem," he said in an interview with the liberal Haaretz. "That is a revolutionary change in outlook."

"There are things that are happening, which have not happened in the past, which are developing and ripening," he said, adding that Israel had to "know how to profit from this occasion."