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Reuters
July 17, 2007
By Adam Entous
Israel ruled out on Tuesday negotiations "at this stage" over the boundaries of a future Palestinian state, rebuffing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and casting doubt on a renewed U.S. push to address the issue.
Israel's response came one day after U.S. President George W. Bush said "serious negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state" can begin soon. Bush said these negotiations should lead to a deal on Palestinian borders, suggesting other final-status issues like Jerusalem and refugees wait for later.
Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the Palestinian president, who dismissed a Hamas-led cabinet after the Islamist group's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last month, was prepared to start negotiations immediately on all final-status issues. Abbas delivered that message in person to Olmert when they met in Jerusalem on Monday, officials said.
"Israel has openly stated that we're willing to talk about issues of 'political horizon' and about how to achieve the vision of two states for two peoples," said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
"But we have been very clear that we are not willing to discuss at this stage the three core issues of borders, refugees and Jerusalem," Eisin added.
Western diplomats and analysts said Bush appeared to be outlining a new strategy of staged negotiations under which borders would be delineated before the parties try to settle the other core questions.
Bush said the negotiations he envisaged starting soon "must lead to a territorial settlement, with mutually agreed borders reflecting previous lines and current realities, and mutually agreed adjustments."
Doing so, Bush said, would help show Palestinians "a clear way forward" to establishing a state, and could "ultimately" lead to agreement on the fate of refugees and Jerusalem and a "permanent end to the conflict."
Borders first
"On the face of it, President Bush is now saying, in effect, that parties should focus on what is solvable, namely territory, while deferring the issues considered most difficult: Jerusalem and refugees," said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He called this "a departure from the past when all issues were bundled together."
Several Israeli newspaper columnists cast Bush's new peace push as too little, too late. He leaves office in a year and a half. "Peace in the Middle East is like the horizon: The closer you get to it, the farther away it becomes," wrote Nahum Barnea, a pundit with Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
A senior Israeli official said Israel discounted the seriousness of Bush's push for negotiations on borders because "he did not set any timetable."
The senior Israeli official said Israel was counting on Bush insisting that Palestinians rein in militants before advancing to talks about borders. But another official acknowledged: "The sequencing/phasing is left vague and open to interpretation."
Bush urged Israel to uproot small Jewish outposts built without government approval in the West Bank but stopped short of demanding established settlements be removed. Instead, he called for an end to "settlement expansion."
Israel said it welcomed U.S. plans to hold a peace conference that would include neighboring Arab states. Eisin said Saudi Arabia and other countries that do not have formal ties to Israel should take part.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Corrine Heller in Jerusalem)
Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited
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