Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tentative agreement to revive U.S.-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians met scepticism and scorn on Sunday from some members of his rightist coalition government, including within his own party.
With no date yet set for negotiations to begin, let alone a public blueprint for their terms, Netanyahu did not yet appear at risk of a political crisis. Rare praise for him from the centre-left opposition suggested they were willing to replace any nationalist allies he might lose over a future peace accord.
Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been tight-lipped about the prospective talks, in keeping with the discretion requested by U.S. Secretary John Kerry, who announced the breakthrough on Friday after months of intensive mediation.
Washington hopes to host Israeli and Palestinian negotiators within a week for the launch of “final-status” talks on founding a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state, in territories the latter captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
But Netanyahu’s partner in the ruling Likud Beitenu faction, Avigdor Lieberman, ridiculed the idea that anything more than an interim accord might be achieved in the decades-old conflict.
“It’s important to negotiate, and even more important for negotiations to be predicated on realism and not illusions,” Lieberman wrote on Facebook. “There is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not in the coming years, and what’s possible and important to do is conflict-management.”
Transport Minister Yisrael Katz of Likud mocked Abbas, whose U.S.-backed administration holds limited sway in the occupied West Bank while the Palestinian enclave of Gaza is controlled by Islamist Hamas rivals opposed to co-existence with Israel.
“Abu Mazen (Abbas) rules over Palestinians less than (President Bashar) Assad rules in Syria,” Katz told reporters, referring to the more than two-year-old Islamist-let insurgency wracking Damascus, another enemy of the Jewish state.
“Just as no one would consider ceding any territory to Assad in the current situation, so certainly no one is thinking seriously of ceding territory to Abu Mazen at time when he doesn’t completely rule over most of the Palestinian population.”
Israel said on Saturday, however, that it would meet Abbas’s call to free scores of Palestinian prisoners held since before the sides began diplomatic contacts in 1993.
Negotiations have waxed and waned since, last breaking down in late 2010 when an Israeli moratorum on settlement construction in occupied territory expired.
DIFFICULT DECISIONS
Challenged in the past over domestically divisive issues like whether to engage the Palestinians or to go to war over Iran’s nuclear programme, Netanyahu has sought to reassure Israelis that he was strong enough to make difficult decisions.
“The negotiations will not be easy,” he told his cabinet on Sunday in remarks aired by Israeli broadcasters.
“But we are entering them with integrity and frankness in the hope that this process will be handled responsibly, in a serious and purposeful manner - and I have to say, at least during the first stages, discreetly.”
He repeated past pledges to put any accord to a national referendum. Opinion polls reflect majority Israeli support for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, though less so for removing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
A weaker-than-expected showing in a January general election meant Likud Beitenu had to cobble together a coalition with upstart parties like the religious-nationalist Jewish Home, which opposes Palestinian sovereignty and champions settlements.
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of Jewish Home, threatened last week to quit the government should it accept, as a basis for negotiations, the Palestinians’ demand that the borders of their state approximate the West Bank and Gaza lines.
But he sounded more circumspect on Sunday, apparently reassured by Israel’s statements that it would be under no “preconditions” for the talks, including a long-standing Palestinian call for a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“Our insistence on our principles has paid off,” he said in a statement. “With the start of negotiations, we will insist on continuing normal life and building in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) … We embark on this journey with caution and with our eyes open. Naive, we are not.”
Israeli political commentators noted that Jewish Home, one of whose ministers holds the housing portfolio, had complained for months about a de facto slowdown in settlement construction ordered by Netanyahu - yet stayed in government.
Were the party to quit in protest at an eventual Palestine treaty, Netanyahu could expect to find center-left Labour, which currently heads the Israeli political opposition, as a stand-in.
“We are following these moves with amity and support,” Labour leader Shelly Yachimovich told Israel Radio, referring to Netanyahu’s willingness to enter talks expected to last months.
“If, during this year, there will be a point when we are on the eve of an accord, truly on the eve of a real, documented drama, and we see the partners from the extreme right leaving Netanyahu’s coalition, then certainly we will reconsider entering the government. It is not because of us that peace will be lost,” she said
* *
Borders Remain Sticking Point as Israel Talks Loom With Palestinians
BIg-Ticket Dispute Is Over Land — and Jerusalem
Israel will not bow to the Palestinians’ demand on the borders of their future state before peace talks begin but will meet their request for the release of some prisoners, Israeli officials said on Saturday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that Israel and the Palestinians had laid the groundwork to resume talks after an almost three-year stalemate, but that the deal was not final and required more diplomacy.
Remarks made on Saturday by Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steintiz suggest the sides still face major stumbling blocks before negotiations can resume, however.
Yaalon said in a statement that Israel “had insisted it would enter negotiations with no preconditions which included the Palestinian demand on the 1967 borders … and that is exactly what is happening now.”
The Palestinians say the talks must be about establishing a future state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, with borders approximating the boundaries that existed before Israel captured those territories in a 1967 war.
Steinitz said there had been no Israeli concession on that point nor on the Palestinian demand that Israel halt all construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“There is no chance that we will agree to enter any negotiations that begin with defining territorial borders or concessions by Israel, nor a construction freeze,” he said.
A senior Palestinian official with knowledge of the talks suggested the Palestinians would not back down. “Our position remains clear: resumption of negotiations should be based on the two-state solution and on the 1967 borders.”
Kerry said on Friday that the deal between Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations was still being “formalised” but that negotiators for both sides could begin talks in Washington “within the next week or so”.
Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested the United States could have found a formula that would avoid the 1967 border issue torpedoing resumption of negotiations.
“The talks should be possible when both sides feel they have not conceded their basic positions. The Americans are entitled to say whatever they want. For instance, they could say that they think the talks should be based on the 1967 borders, but that this does not bind us,” Hanegbi told Israel Radio.
“I suppose they will also say that the goal of the negotiations is to reach a deal in which the Palestinians recognise Israel as Jewish state, something that at least at the moment the Palestinians are unwilling to accept,” Hanegbi said.
PRISONERS
Palestinians have also long demanded that Israel free prisoners held since before 1993, when the two sides signed the Oslo Accords - an interim deal intended to lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“In all meetings held by President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) with minister Kerry and others, the Palestinian demand to release the prisoners topped the agenda,” said Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdaineh. “Freeing prisoners is a Palestinian priority that should precede any agreement.
Steinitz indicated that some of those who would be released had been convicted of violent crimes against Israelis.
“There will be some release of prisoners,” Steinitz told Israel Radio. “I don’t want to give numbers but there will be heavyweight prisoners who have been in jail for tens of years … it will not be simple, but we will make that gesture.” Steintiz said. “
The release would be carried out in phases, he added. It was unclear if any prisoners would be released before talks began. Some Israeli officials have said prisoners would only be freed after negotiations were underway.
There are 103 pre-Oslo prisoners in Israeli jails, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a Palestinian body that looks after the interests of inmates and their families.
WASHINGTON
Israeli and Palestinian officials told Reuters on Friday the talks would take months to unfold. Steinitz said the Palestinians had agreed to enter talks that would take between nine months to a year.
He said this would stop the Palestinians from taking unilateral steps at the U.N. General Assembly in September, when they had planned to seek recognition for their statehood in the absence of direct talks with Israel.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy told a news conference on Saturday: “We support serious talks to take place with a set and precise time frame.”
Kerry’s drive to relaunch the peace talks was endorsed this week by the Arab League, which potentially holds out the prospect of a broader regional peace with Israel upon the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Arab League’s own peace proposals, launched over a decade ago, foundered on the issue of a return to 1967 borders, but it confirmed on Wednesday it had shifted its position to countenance “limited exchange of territory of the same value and size.”
Such a formula could allow Israel to keep large settlement blocs it has said should remain in Israeli hands in any future peace deal.
related posts
Lapid: Peace talks must lead to 'fair divorce ' from Palestinians
Kerry Optimistic About "Peace"
Even Israel’s Far Left Thinks EU-Kerry Approach Is Wrong
Op-Ed: The Two-State Solution Was Tried 91 Years Ago
Kerry's Embarrassing "Peace Process" Obsession
.
source
No comments:
Post a Comment