Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a meeting at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah yesterday.
Reuters/Ramallah
Palestinian leaders yesterday put off a decision about restarting peace talks with Israel, with most saying Israel must first meet their terms before negotiations can start, a Palestinian official said.
President Mahmoud Abbas had gathered fellow PLO leaders in Ramallah to discuss his meetings with US Secretary of State John Kerry this week. Kerry has extended his stay in the region in the hope that he would achieve a breakthrough in resuming the talks that stalled in 2010.
But no decision emerged, one official who attended yesterday’s meeting told Reuters, and Abbas formed a committee to present a formal response to Kerry’s peace push on Friday.
“Most PLO officials who attended the meeting described Kerry’s offer as not sufficient for resuming negotiations with Israel,” said the official, Qais Abdel-Karim.
The main sticking point seemed to be a Palestinian demand that Israel agree to negotiate on condition that the borders of a future Palestinian state would be based on boundaries drawn before a 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose rightist coalition government includes parties that back Jewish settlers on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, says he wants to start peace talks immediately, but without preconditions.
“There is a general tendency among PLO officials to reject resuming negotiations before Israel recognises the 1967 borders as a base for the peace process and for it to end settlement activity,” said Abdel-Karim.
Kerry has given no details on where he believes the two sides might give ground, though he said after meeting Abbas in Jordan on Wednesday that differences had narrowed “very significantly”.
A US State Department official said there were currently no plans to announce a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks.
The Arab League confirmed this week that it was willing to consider swapping some land on either side of the 1967 borders, bringing it closer to Israel’s position. Israel says the old borders are indefensible and that some West Bank settlement blocs should be incorporated into Israel.
Palestinians familiar with Abbas’s thinking speculated he might now forgo the call for a settlement moratorium given a recent slowdown in housing starts issued by Israel’s government, though it may still be painful to roll back his previous demand.
If Abbas yields on the issue, it may be in exchange for a goodwill gesture from Israel such as an amnesty for around 100 veteran PLO fighters long held in its jails.
Israel gave no sign such prisoner releases were in the offing, but major Israeli broadcaster Army Radio said some West Bank roadblocks could be dismantled to ease Palestinian travel.
