Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told Arab powers he may seek US recognition for a Palestinian state taking in all of the West Bank should peace talks with Israel stay stalled, an aide said yesterday.
The idea, raised during close-door Arab League deliberations in Libya on Friday, could step up pressure on Israel to extend a freeze on Jewish settlement building in the occupied territory, without which Abbas has said peace negotiations cannot continue.
Arab foreign ministers endorsed that Palestinian position. However, hoping to head off a collapse of the talks launched by US President Barack Obama just five weeks ago, said they would reconvene in a month to discuss “alternatives” mooted by Abbas.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said these included “ask[ing] the United States to recognize the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders” and studying the possibility of a similar UN recognition through a Security Council resolution.
“I cannot specify all the alternatives that were presented by President Abbas, but the president will keep working with the American administration to achieve a full cessation of settlement activities in order to restart talks,” Erekat said.
A diplomatic source at the league meeting said another of the alternatives put forward by Abbas was for him to threaten to step down unless settlement building is halted.
Abbas had been expected to address Arab heads of state gathered in the Libyan town of Sirte yesterday, but aides said the Palestinian president would not deliver a speech.
Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip —lands Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war. Israel quit Gaza in 2005 but insists on keeping all of Jerusalem — its declared capital — and swathes of West Bank settlements under any peace accord.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a partial 10-month freeze on settlement construction last November in what he called a goodwill gesture to get negotiations started.
Netanyahu, whose governing coalition includes pro-settler parties, has resisted calls to renew the moratorium, which expired last month. He says the dispute would become irrelevant should peacemaking ripen to the point of delineating borders.
Past proposals for Palestinian statehood to be declared without Israeli consent have been received coolly by the US and other world powers, who want a negotiated solution though they regard the settlements as illegitimate and do not accept the Jewish state’s claim on East Jerusalem.
The league statement spelled yet another reprieve for a Middle East peace process that Obama has made a centerpiece of US foreign policy. Washington welcomed it.
“We will continue to work with the parties, and all our international partners, to advance negotiations toward a two-state solution and encourage the parties to take constructive actions toward that end,” Assistant US Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley said.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the Arab League meeting or Erekat’s account of the proposal on Palestinian statehood.
Israel Radio quoted an unnamed Netanyahu aide as crediting the US with keeping the peace talks in play.
Abbas has said he wants to go on negotiating but cannot unless the building of new homes for Jewish settlers is frozen for “three to four months more to give peace a chance.”
The Palestinians say settlements would deny them a viable state, which they envisage having East Jerusalem as capital.
The Obama administration is seeking a 60-day extension of the freeze, diplomats said, offering Israel various incentives.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in