US refuses Palestinian offer to resume talks

Ramallah: US Secretary of State John Kerry has told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in their latest London meeting that it is impossible for Israel to declare a three month construction moratorium because the move would cause the collapse of the government coalition.

According to a report published in the Palestinian daily, Al Quds, a senior Palestinian official was quoted as saying that Kerry had categorically refused a Palestinian proposal submitted by President Abbas to resume peace talks if Israel agreed to halt its colonial activities for three months.

After a three-year hiatus, the US Administration had brokered a deal which renewed the peace talks for nine months until April 29 2014. This process was intended to produce a final peace agreement between Israeli and the Palestinians, but the US aim was reduced to a framework agreement that addresses the basis for the discussion of the fundamental issues between the parties.

Israel stymied the process by refusing to release the fourth batch of veteran Palestinian prisoners as promised. The Israeli insistence on not releasing the prisoners provoked Abbas to sign Palestinian applications to join 15 international treaties and conventions and to strike a unity deal with his rival Hamas (which had forcefully seized Gaza and ousted Abbas’s loyal troops). The Israeli government then suspended the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

To bridge the gap, Israel Justice Minister and Chief Negotiator Tzipi Livni is offering the Israeli government a colony freeze of the smallest West Bank outposts. According to a report in the Israeli daily the Jerusalem Post, Livni was quoted in responding to a West Bank Area C annexation plan submitted by her cabinet colleague Minister of Economy Naftali Bennett, as saying that “a settlement freeze of the smaller West Bank outposts would help bring about more international support for Israel than annexation which is dangerous and irresponsible.”

“A unilateral move to annex Area C will not happen as long as I’m in the government,” she said.

Bennett’s stability plan of annexing Area C of the West Bank is gaining momentum in Israel, given the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dismissed the possibility of unilateral territorial withdrawals from the West Bank and appeared open to annexation plans for portions of the West Bank in the absence of a peace process. “The idea of taking unilateral steps is gaining ground from the center left to the center right,” Netanyahu said in an interview with the Bloomberg.

The US Administration does not appear to have lost all hope in the peace negotiations and it has called on the Israelis and the Palestinians to refrain from unilateral steps that undermine trust between the parties. “We do not think either side should do anything to complicate efforts right now to build the trust necessary to resume negotiations,” US State Department deputy spokesman Marie Harf said on Friday.

Meanwhile, Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat told a political seminar in the town of Yatta of Hebron that the Palestinians are ready to resume the peace talks with Israel effective immediately if Israel releases the fourth batch of Palestinian veteran prisoners and halts its colonial activities.

“Kerry did not offer President Abbas in London anything in writing on the resumption of the peace talks. Nothing so far is clear about the resumption of the peace talks,” he said. “Palestine will officially be part of the Hague Convention of 1907 on June 2. This convention is a central ingredient of the international law and it is a binding for all parties which signed and those which did not,” he said.

Dr. Ghassan Al Khatib, a political analyst, and former spokesman for the Palestinian government downplayed the resumption of the peace talks. “What matters here is the attitudes and behaviors of the parties, not the resumption of the peace negotiations,” he told Gulf News. “And the big question here will be what will be the view of the US and of the international community about this impasse.”

He said that the window for the two state solution is closing and that that hurts Israel more than it does to the Palestinians who hold two cards. “Applying for the international institutions and the Palestinian internal reconciliation in a way which does not bother Israel are the two main cards which the Palestinians hold in hand,” he said. “The impasse will force the Palestinians to play those two cards but gradually.”

He said that as the Israeli Justice Minister Livni is in charge of putting in place the Israeli courts’ verdicts with many of them against colonial expansion and ordering the immediate demolition of many colony outposts as they are illegal within the framework of Israeli law. “Knowing the illegality of those outposts, Livni is offering to limit expansion in the construction of the outposts. This is going beyond human imagination,” he said.