Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he’ll resume direct peace talks if Israel accepts its 1967 frontier as a baseline for the borders of a Palestinian state and agrees to the deployment of an international force to guard them.
Abbas is under growing pressure from the US to resume negotiations, and met on Saturday with President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
Abbas’ latest comments, published on Saturday in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, hinted at some flexibility in his position. The Palestinian leader did not mention a comprehensive Israeli settlement freeze as a condition for negotiations — something he has underlined as crucial in the past.
However, it seemed unlikely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would meet Abbas’ demands. Netanyahu has refused to be pinned down on a framework for negotiations, insisting on talks without conditions.
The Palestinians are wary of entering talks with the hardline Netanyahu, after 17 years of intermittent talks with a succession of Israeli leaders failed to bring them any closer to statehood.
The Palestinians want to establish their state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Netanyahu has not said how much occupied territory he is willing to relinquish for a Palestinian state. However, he has said he will not give up control of Jerusalem and has insisted on a continued Israeli troop presence on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state.
Negotiations between Abbas and Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, broke off in December 2008, on the eve of Israel’s military offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Abbas has said that in these negotiations, he and Olmert reached an agreement in principle on security arrangements, including the deployment of an international force in the future Palestinian state.
The two leaders also discussed a possible land swap that would allow Israel to annex some Jewish settlements on war-captured lands, and compensate the Palestinians with an equal amount of Israeli land. The two sides disagreed on the amount of land to be swapped.
“We have put forward to the Israelis our position on different final status issues, and especially on borders and security,” Abbas told the Jordanian newspaper. “We have said that the borders need to be on a 1967 basis, with agreement on land swaps equal in value and size, and we gave our vision regarding security, which was agreed on previously, in Olmert’s days.”
He said the Israelis need to recognize these propositions as acceptable, in principle.
“If they agree, we will consider that progress ... and this would prompt us to go to direct negotiations,” he said.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev blamed the Palestinians for the deadlock.
“We definitely don’t want another year and a half without negotiations,” he said.
It was not clear whether Mitchell made any headway in his meeting with Abbas on Saturday.
Mitchell would only say he was “heartened” by the talks he has held in the region in recent days and that he would return soon. On Friday, he met with Netanyahu.
The US envoy has been shuttling between Abbas and Netanyahu in recent weeks to try to close some of the gaps between the sides.
Abbas, Netanyahu and Mitchell were scheduled to meet separately with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo yesterday to sound out the prospects for a return to direct negotiations.
Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said a decision on direct talks is not expected before early next month.
He said the Palestine Liberation Organization’s top decision-making body and Arab foreign ministers would have to weigh in on the issue, and that Abbas is also waiting for clarifications from the US.
The Palestinian leader will have to make a decision by September at the latest. The four months set aside for Mitchell’s shuttle diplomacy and Israel’s partial curb on settlement construction will have come to an end by then.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS