DPA/Ramallah/Jerusalem
Palestinians will be prepared to resume talks with Israel once the latter freezes all settlement activity and accepts clear frames of reference for the talks, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat reaffirmed yesterday. “These are not favours that Israel is doing for us. These are its obligations in accordance with international law,” Erakat said in a statement issued after he met in Jerusalem with representatives of the Middle East Quartet of international mediators, who began separate talks with both sides yesterday in another effort to get peace talks going again. “We have no problem with dialogue, but it must be meaningful,” Erakat said. He called on the Quartet - the US, Russia, the UN and the EU - “to explain, in practical terms, what measures it will take to ensure that a future round of negotiations will succeed where countless previous rounds have failed.” “Issuing statements and press releases is not enough,” he said. Erakat’s comments after the meeting echoed those of another Palestinian negotiator, Nabil Shaath, who told Voice of Palestine Radio some hours before the talks with the Quartet that Palestinian demands “are very clear and they will not change for any reason”. “The Quartet does not seem to understand that we will not return again to negotiations while the land is being stolen from under our feet.” Direct Israel-Palestinian talks broke off a little more than a year ago, when Israel refused to extend a partial, limited 10-month freeze on construction at its West Bank settlements. The Palestinian leadership says it will not resume negotiations until Israel stops all settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and recognises the lines which existed before the 1967 Middle East war as the borders of the future Palestinian state. Israel says direct negotiations must take place without what it calls Palestinian preconditions.