The Palestinians are ready to yield parts of the West Bank to Israel if compensated with an equal amount of Israeli territory, according to the lead Palestinian negotiator, a policy that could bring an elusive peace deal closer.
In an Associated Press interview on Wednesday, Ahmed Qureia set out his guidelines for negotiations in advance of a US-sponsored Middle East conference next month. Qureia, a 71-year-old former Palestinian prime minister who dealt with five Israeli prime ministers during 14 years of negotiations, is trying again with Ehud Olmert.
Qureia said the US-hosted Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland, set for Nov. 26, was a "very, very, very important opportunity."
If it fails, he said, Israelis and Palestinians will perhaps suffer more than in the blood-soaked years following the unsuccessful Camp David summit in 2000.
Israelis and Palestinians are slowly rebuilding trust, making compromise possible, Qureia said in Abu Dis, a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem.
He heads a four-member Palestinian team that first met earlier this week with Olmert's top aides. Ahead of the November conference, the two sides are trying to write a joint declaration of principles on the so-called core issues of the conflict -- borders, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees.
The disputes have defied solution, but Qureia believes there could be enough common ground to come up with a general sentence or two on how to approach each issue to guide negotiators in the future.
For example, the Palestinians want the old Israeli-Palestinian frontier -- before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War -- to be the basis of talks.
However, Israel will likely ask to keep chunks of east Jerusalem and the West Bank, in order to incorporate hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers. Palestinian leaders are increasingly promoting the idea of a swap, provided they get comparable land in Israel, even though it implies recognition that large Jewish settlements will remain in place.
In a joint declaration, Qureia said, it would be enough to declare the 1967 lines as the starting point say the border is open to modifications, based on the principle that the Palestinians end up with as much land as they lost in 1967. The exact border would be worked out in talks following the Annapolis conference. Part of the deal would likely be a land corridor linking the West Bank and Gaza, he said.
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