Last-ditch US efforts to rescue peace talks with Palestine are meeting tough resistance within Israel’s governing coalition, with the far right threatening to quit over the mooted concessions.
Under huge US pressure to salvage the peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on Friday facing the threat of his Cabinet falling apart.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met on Thursday under the auspices of US envoy Martin Indyk, nearly two weeks after the talks hit a fresh crisis when Israel refused to release a final batch of prisoners and Palestinians retaliated by seeking accession to 15 international treaties.
Photo: AFP
Israel then said it would freeze the transfer of taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Despite the escalations, Israeli media reported a possible deal under which Arab-Israelis would be part of the fourth batch of prisoners still to be freed under commitments made when the US started the peace negotiations last July.
In return, the Palestinians would agree to extend the talks beyond their April 29 deadline and Washington would release American-born Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, the reports said.
US Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki called speculation over a deal “premature” and also said no decision had been reached on Pollard’s release.
However, Israeli Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home party, threatened to pull his party out of the coalition if such a deal was reached.
“If the government proposes this deal to us, the Jewish Home party will pull out of the coalition,” he said in a statement after the tripartite meeting.
If Bennett’s party of 12 members of parliament quit the coalition, Netanyahu would have only 56 seats, four short of the 60 necessary in the 120-seat parliament, forcing either a search for a new coalition partner or fresh elections.
Officials from Netanyahu’s Likud Party dismissed Bennett’s threat, telling media that “nobody is being held in the coalition against their will,” and adding that they were already familiar with Bennett’s tactic of “making idle threats he knows will never materialize.”
Journalist and political commentator Yossi Elituv said the only thing that would cause Bennett to leave the coalition would be if he were “kicked out.”
His attitude is “to be in the government, threaten to leave and never quit,” Elituv said.
The real threat comes from within Netanyahu’s own Likud Party.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin said a deal including a settlement construction freeze and release of prisoners, after the Palestinians applied to international institutions, “could shock the political system and force Israel into new elections.”
Zehava Galon of the left-wing Meretz Party said on Friday that “there was only one thing currently less reliable than Bennett’s threats to leave over the negotiations — the negotiations themselves.”
One way for Netanyahu to maintain his coalition if the Jewish Home left would be with the Labor Party, which heads the opposition.
Elituv said Netanyahu and Labor leader Issac Herzog “were dying” to form a new coalition, “but it’s not up to them.”
After Israel announced it would be freezing the transfer of taxes it collects for the PA, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat lashed out, calling the move “Israeli hijacking and the theft of the Palestinian people’s money.”
Even as tensions rose, there still appeared to be a determination to continue the peace process, none more so than with Washington, which risked seeing an entire year of intensive work disappear, wrote Sima Kadmon in Israel’s mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
“Despite the evasive games, it is too soon to eulogize the prisoner deal or bury the negotiations and mainly it is too soon to talk about early elections,” she wrote.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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