Israel-Palestinian Peace Deal Is Still Possible Within a Year, U.S. Says
Israelis and Palestinians can still reach a peace agreement, even with the current impasse over renewing a moratorium on Israeli settlements, the U.S. said.
“We believe this can be resolved in a year’s time,” State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said yesterday. “We need the commitment from the two sides to stay in direct talks.”
Palestinians have said they won’t return to negotiations unless Israel resumes a partial freeze on West Bank construction that expired Sept. 26. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would renew the moratorium if the Palestinian leadership, “in an unequivocal manner,” recognized Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinians rejected the proposal.
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that he continues to see a “real chance for peace” in the region. “If we can get this negotiation back on track again,” Blair said via satellite to a conference in Seoul, “we can make progress.”
Blair is the Middle East coordinator for the so-called Quartet -- the U.S., the United Nations, Russia and the European Union -- that is supporting the peace talks.
President Barack Obama has made establishing an Israeli- Palestinian peace deal a U.S. foreign-policy goal from his first days in office. Direct talks between the two sides began in Washington Sept. 2 and stumbled soon after Jewish settlers resumed building in the West Bank.
Focus on Borders
The U.S. is working on formulas to prevent the peace talks from getting stalled by disputes every few months, Crowley said. One approach involves having the two parties focus up-front on the issue of borders, which would neutralize disagreements about Israeli settlements, he said.
“We’ve asked Israel and the United States to give us a map that outlines the borders they propose,” the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, said today in a telephone interview. “Our position is that the borders must be based on the 1967 lines” that existed before Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
It is important that the two leaders are still engaged in discussions, even while they’re unable to come to an agreement, Crowley said.
“Now you have leaders saying, ‘This is what I’m going to contribute to the process, this is what I need to get out of the process to be able to convince my respective constituencies that there is value in continuing,’” Crowley said. “Those exchanges, we hope, will help continue the process.”
Palestinian Refugees
Palestinians reject the Israeli demand to be recognized as a Jewish state because they expect it would make it difficult for them to claim land for Palestinian refugees evicted from what is now Israel during the battles that led to Israel’s founding.
Israel says such recognition is necessary to ensure the Palestinians don’t make additional claims once a peace treaty has been signed.
“There is value in continuing with this process,” Crowley said. “There is no other way to resolve core issues except through these direct negotiations.”
About 500,000 Jews have moved to the West Bank and east Jerusalem since 1967.
The United Nations says that settlements are illegal, and the International Committee of the Red Cross says they breach the Fourth Geneva Convention governing actions on occupied territory. Obama has said the settlements aren’t legitimate.
Israel says the settlements don’t fall under the convention because the territory wasn’t recognized as belonging to anyone before the 1967 war, in which Israel prevailed, and therefore isn’t occupied.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net; Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net.
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