THE relaunched Israel-Palestinian peace talks will begin by discussing the issue of borders and security, before moving on to other topics, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as saying yesterday. “If we want to start negotiations, then we will start with borders and then move to security because borders is important for us and security is important for them (Israel),” the Ramallah-based Al Ayyam daily yesterday cited Abbas as saying from Tripoli, Libya. The direct talks, launched last Thursday in Washington, after an hiatus of nearly two years, are due to continue next week in Egypt.
The Palestinian leader said he would push for recognition of the de facto borders which existed before the June 1967 war as the borders of the future Palestinian state. Abbas added that “if we agree on it (border) and demarcate it, then this means we have found a solution for Jerusalem, water and settlements and all that will be left are issues such as refugees and others which we will discuss in the second stage.” He said that once a treaty is reached, Palestinians would not “accept any Israeli presence, whether civilian or military, on the Palestinian territories.” Abbas, on a tour of north African Arab countries to brief their leaders on the Washington talks, reiterated his position that the fresh negotiations will come to an end if Israel resumes construction in its West Bank settlements at the end of September, when a 10-month partial building freeze is due to end.
The negotiations, he said, “will be for this month. If the government of Israel extended the settlement freeze decision, we will continue in negotiations. If it does not, we will get out of these negotiations.” Abbas said he made this position clear to US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “There is already a freeze,” said Abbas. “What we fear is that the freeze will be cancelled and they resume settlement (construction) everywhere.”
Netanyahu has not indicated any willingness to continue the freeze. His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has spoken out forcibly against any extension of the moratorium. Lieberman, however, faced calls yesterday for his dismissal after he made disparaging and pessimistic remarks about the negotiations with the Palestinians. Minority Affairs Minister Avishai Braverman, of the centre-left Labour Party,, told Israel Army Radio that it was inconceivable that Lieberman, charged with presenting Israel’s policies to the international community, should have no faith in the talks and belittle it.
Lieberman, addressing activists from his nationalist Yisrael B’Teinu party on Sunday night, said peace with the Palestinians was unachievable and that Israel should instead go for a long-term interim agreement. A peace agreement is an “unattainable goal” and it will not arrive “next year and not in the next generation,” he said. He said the 17 years since the start of the first Israeli- Palestinian peace process “should be enough time to realise what is and what is not possible.”
Yesterday, Lieberman told Israel Radio that he was nonetheless prepared to give the peace process a chance, but he was trying to be realistic. “I am afraid of creating a situation with a lot of expectations that cannot be reached,” he said.