Israel on Sunday handed the Palestinians a proposal aimed at extending peace talks beyond an April 29 deadline, as efforts to salvage the negotiations came to a head.
The fate of the US-brokered peace process could be decided within days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier, warning that “either the matter will be resolved or it will blow up.”
Netanyahu’s remarks to ministers from his rightwing Likud party came as US officials were working around the clock to prevent a collapse of the negotiations over a dispute about Palestinian prisoners.
“In any case, there won’t be any deal without Israel knowing clearly what it will get in exchange,” Netanyahu said.
According to a Palestinian official, Israel presented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a draft agreement to push forward with the talks.
Abbas was to examine the proposal during the night, he said.
An Israeli official would not provide details on the proposal, but said: “Now the Palestinians need to reply if they are willing to continue negotiations.”
With the talks teetering on the brink of collapse, Washington has been fighting an uphill battle to coax the two sides into accepting a framework proposal that would extend negotiations beyond April 29.
However, the issue has become tied up with the fate of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners whom Israel was to have freed over the weekend under the original terms agreed to relaunch talks.
Israel on Friday last week informed the Palestinians it would not free the prisoners, with the US Department of State confirming it was working “intensively” to resolve the dispute.
US officials said Secretary of State John Kerry, in Paris on Sunday, spoke with Netanyahu and later told reporters in the French capital that it was not yet appropriate for the US to make any public judgement about the situation “at this important moment.”
“It’s really a question between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and what Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to do,” he added.
US Department of State sources did not rule out the possibility that Kerry could fly from France to the Middle East if necessary yesterday.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said: “This is a critical week for the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” noting Kerry’s efforts and the “commitment and contribution of [US] President [Barack] Obama towards this endeavor.”
Yaalon, who made the remarks during a meeting with chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, had recently criticized Washington’s foreign policy and reportedly called Kerry’s peacemaking efforts “obsessive” and “messianic.”
The Palestinians say they will not even consider extending the talks without the prisoners being freed, but Israel has refused to release them without a Palestinian commitment to continue the talks, prompting a fresh crisis of confidence.
“We agreed to the fourth batch,” Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told reporters on Sunday, while stressing it would not happen as long as Abbas was preparing to “blow up the negotiations” the very next day.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said in Austria that all sides were “working around the clock in an effort to reach a breakthrough in the talks.”
“I hope that in the coming days there will be positive developments in the negotiations,” Peres said.
“The ball is now in Israel’s court,” Palestinian prisoners minister Issa Qaraqaa told Voice of Palestine radio, saying the leadership was expecting an answer from the Israeli government within 24 hours.
Aside from the release of the 26 veteran detainees, Abbas reportedly wants an Israeli commitment to free more prisoners as one of his conditions for agreeing to extend the talks.
‘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