A senior Fatah official said Monday that the Palestinian leadership put forward seven terms by which they would extend peace talks with Israel beyond their April 29 deadline.
Amin Maqboul, a member of the Fatah revolutionary council, told the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds that the Palestinian Authority would agree to an extension of negotiations if Israel agreed to: announce the basis on which future talks will be held; draw the outline of the borders of a Palestinian state within the next three months; halt settlement construction; withdraw Israeli troops from the West Bank’s Area C to the lines held before the Second Intifada; release the fourth wave of prisoners that it has until now refused to do; end what he called “disruptions” in Jerusalem and open Palestinian institutions in the city.
Bank as part of the peace process, and won’t release the final 26 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails because it objects to the freeing of 14 Israeli Arab terrorists included in that list. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has until refused to make any prior commitments to extend the peace negotiations.
Abbas told the Israeli opposition MPs visiting him in the West Bank city of Ramallah last Wednesday that if talks were extended, he would want the first three months “devoted to a serious discussion of borders,” Haaretz reported.
Maqboul said that the Palestinian demands were given to American mediator Martin Indyk and Israel has yet to respond to them.
Fatah leader Azzam al-Ahmad confirmed that the Palestinians have demanded that, should the negotiations be extended, the first three months be dedicated to drawing the border of a future Palestinian state. He said that no agreement to extend peace talks has been reached, and that the latest rounds of meetings by negotiators Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni have yielded no progress.
A senior Palestinian official quoted by the Palestine News Network on Monday said that during Friday’s meeting Indyk presented no new proposals on how to salvage the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Officials in Jerusalem on Friday also said that no progress was made in emergency talks that took place between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators the night before, and that the two sides would meet again this week after the Passover holiday.
Maqboul’s list of demands were published a day after a report in the Israeli press said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to dissolve the PA and disband Palestinian security forces operating in the West Bank if peace negotiations with Israel fail, a move which would create huge security and diplomatic problems for Israel.
According to Palestinian sources cited by Yedioth Ahronoth on Sunday, Abbas and top PA officials are considering the drastic move, which would involve canceling the 1993 Oslo Accords and announcing that the Palestinian Authority is a “government under occupation” without full sovereignty, which would technically move full responsibility for the Palestinians, in the West Bank at least, to Israel.
The threat, which has reportedly been passed on to Israel, would also disband and abolish PA security forces operating in the West Bank, theoretically opening the way for expanded Palestinian unrest against Israeli forces. The move could also prompt a surge in international legal and diplomatic action against Israel.
Yedioth said a vote on the move is scheduled for a PLO meeting on Saturday, three days before the peace talks are currently scheduled to end.
yamit82 Said:
Had it not been for the Oslo Accords on what basis Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders would have returned to Gaza and Y $ S and started the so called negotiations that lead to terrorism? The accord resulted in PA having a place to stay in until a final negotiated settlement of the issue. By PA, I mean a Palestinian Authority.
If PA cancels the accords (may not cancel it), on what basis they could even stay where they are now? Absent a negotiated settlement of the issue by both sides (which seems unlikely),
I do not think the Palestinian Arabs and PA could have a historical/legal basis to stay in any part of Y & S.
By genuine peace I mean a peace that may be achieved through negotiation (if at all possible). Though I am an optimist and wish a peace could be achieved without a war, I think it may not be possible.
@ the phoenix:
What do you grow Icicles?
@ honeybee:
Ask the driver to head this way and to drive really slow… Maybe the snow will be gone by then…
I could also use some Oslo accords shhhhhhstuff…
Good one hb,
🙂
yamit82 Said:
I could use a truck load or two of the “Oslo Accords”, Iam planting my kitchen garden.
AbbaGuutuu Said:
The Oslo Accords did not give the Arabs rights to stay in Y&S. It was an accord affording them self-rule with restrictions dependent on a negotiated and agreed upon final settlement agreement.
“You don’t think they have a legal right to be there”? Why not?
Why are you for genuine Peace between us and the Arabs? Then what do you consider genuine Peace?
There will be peace when there are no Arabs in our Land at least a greater degree of peace free from terror and the internal threat to our identity and culture.
The argument that they have national rights because they live here is absurd. Jews lived in Iraq for 2500 years and Poland for over a 1000 years and never had or demanded national rights as an independent nation or autonomy.
@ Christian Schiffer:
–
Folks!
It can be done! 🙂
http://www.hgtv.ca/massivemoves/video/season+2/full+episodes/huge+hacienda/video.html?v=2342803836&p=1&s=dd#massivemoves/video/season+2
I think that’s great, they never had any intention of making peace anyway and how can anyone even consider to make peace with the Arabs as long as they still occupy Israel.
Israel should demand that all Arabs must leave Israel with the borders given by YHWH and pay a substantial financial compensation for damage during the occupation as well as the cost of removing that mosque from the Temple Mount before any peace talks or a cease fire can even be considered.
For the Pal it is and always will be a one way street. The economy is the only area where inroads can be made. As long as the Pal remain extreme in their demands, IL must expand.
If PA cancels Oslo Accords, which gave them a right to stay in Judea and Samaria, I don’t think they have a legal right to be where they are now. I am for genuine peace between Arabs and Jews, which cannot be achieved under PA and Hamas and Arab countries that use the issue to divert public attention from their own domestic and international problems.
And we demand that you stop firing rockets. Every time you fire a rocket into Israel we will take another chunk of our land back!
The PLO’s demands refuse to confront the real issue: recognition of Jewish national self-determination and and renouncing the so-called right of return. All the rest are purely secondary issues. In truth, the PLO does not want real peace with Israel – and never did. But its trying to extort Israel to extend meaningless negotiations without a commitment to end the conflict. Without such a commitment, there is no point to extending the talks.
Although I don’t live in Israel, so I could be out of line, but my personal feeling is that the PA should just go and F themselves.