[SEE ALSO Danon: PA’s UN Bid Means Israeli Sovereignty Bid]
The carrots include a release of prisoners and support to help the Palestinians exploit the gas fields off Gaza, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday.
PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said he was unaware of any such offer.
“Over the last five weeks, Israel has initiated a whole series of confidence-building measures in order to create an atmosphere that will encourage the Palestinians to return to direct talks,” a government official in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “However, if the Palestinians do follow through on their threat and unilaterally seek statehood at the UN,” the official added, “that would be a move in the wrong direction and would necessitate an Israeli response.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas is said to be planning to turn to the UN General Assembly in September and seek to begin the process for Palestine to be recognized as a non-member state.
‘If the Palestinians refuse to return to the negotiating table and try unilaterally to change their status, we will consider this a grave violation of all agreements’
Last year at the September General Assembly, Abbas announced that he was applying for UN membership for Palestine, but the United States made clear it would veto the move in the Security Council, and the Palestinians could not muster the votes in the Council to force the veto. Washington subsequently cut funding to other UN bodies which admitted the Palestinians as members.
Now the Palestinians, who currently have observer status at the UN, are said to be considering seeking a resolution at the upcoming General Assembly meet that would grant them the status of a non-member state, similar to the Vatican. While Palestine would not have a vote in the General Assembly, it would hope to come under the aegis of the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, where it could mount legal challenges to Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel is bent on preventing the UN gambit. “If the Palestinians refuse to return to the negotiating table and try unilaterally to change their status, we will consider this a grave violation of all agreements,” an official in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Maariv reported on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled to 50 the number of Palestinian prisoners, some of them jailed since before the start of the Oslo process, he is willing to release — on two conditions: if the Palestinians abandon their efforts to seek statehood at the UN, and if Abbas agrees to meet Netanyahu for renewed peace talks. Abbas currently refuses to meet Netanyahu, demanding Israel first freeze West Bank settlement building and release more than 100 Palestinian prisoners.
Erekat told The Times of Israel on Sunday he knew nothing of these ideas.
The PMO had no comment on Maariv’s report. An official there did say, however, that Israel has made several “gestures of good will” aimed at reinvigorating the stalled peace process. Such steps included asking the International Monetary Fund for a $100 million loan to the PA last month – which was rejected, ironically, because the PA is not a state — and an agreement signed by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad regulating the taxation and the transfer of goods between Israel and the PA last week. In late March, Israel returned the bodies of 91 Palestinians, and, last month advanced NIS 180 million to the PA in tax transfers to help the authority through the financial difficulties ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas (left) and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (photo credit: Uri Lenz/Flash90)
Israel is also ready to allow the PA to exploit the natural gas field off the Gaza coast, which hitherto has been laying barren, if the Palestinians abort their UN statehood mission. “Israel is ready to start talks about cooperating with the Palestinians in this area, so that they could utilize and exploit the gas field,” the official said.
While the official presented the various measures and offers as beneficial to the Palestinians, Netanyahu is also said to regard it as an Israeli interest that the Palestinians live in relative economic stability, since it means they are less likely to resort to anti-Israel terrorism than those in distress, who have little to lose by attacking Israeli targets.
According to Israeli energy experts, the development of Gaza Marine, the gas field off Gaza, is also in the interest of Israel’s government.
“The people of Ashkelon suffer pollution from electricity produced for the people of Gaza,” Haifa University’s Brenda Shaffer told The Times of Israel recently. “There’s also a small diesel fire plant in Gaza that’s very polluting, and that pollution doesn’t stop at the checkpoints. [An alternative energy source] would be good for Palestinians but also good for Israel.”
The PMO declined to detail what kind of response the Palestinians could expect if they defied Jerusalem’s opposition — and that of the US — and went ahead with their statehood bid.
The Associated Press last week reported about an internal Palestinian document describing certain punitive measures the PA expects from Israel and the US if it went to the General Assembly. The US could shut down the PLO mission in Washington and suspend financial assistance to the Palestinians to the tune of millions of dollars, according to the report. And the Israelis could augment restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement.
Islamo-communism is a self destructive mixture. It is a state of mind not compatible with sanity.
Is Bibi brainless? Hasn’t he yet learned that carrots to Pals is a sign of weakness and a signal for more concessions? The Pals pocket what is givenand then demand more. If they refuse an offer, in the next round they regard it as a promise. No-one but a fool would give them anything until they had given something as a measure of good will.
It is stupid to offer developing gas fields off Gaza for the PA (and Hamas), because it implies that the PA is a polity, rather than the mendicant, mendacious, militaristic, Jew-hating, kleptcracy that it is.
If the Pals go to the UN to gain nationhood without negotiations in violation of all agreements, especially UNSC 242, Israel should retake Samaria, Judea and Gaza and give abu Mazen and Haniya one way tickets to Saudi Arabia. It should then assert sovereignity over those areas and give non-Israelis living there limited self-government with inducements to emigrate.
Israel should set a dead-line for the Arabs to resume negotiations on the borders and the restrictions on their statelet-to-be. Israel should also cease using the stupid term “peace talks”, since the admission of the PLO/PA to Israel controlled areas was predicated on the promise of peace with the cessation of terrorism; its continuance being a good indicator of the value of any promise by a mohammedan. Another indicator being, of course, the treaty with Egypt.
Winston Churchill had it right when he observed that “the Arab is either at your throat or at your heel”. Until Israel shows those dogs who is the master, it will always have those dogs at its throat, because their imagined supremacy is based on the victory that their god grants them over others, especially of Jews. Get that out of their heads and peace will follow as they pass from the seventh to the twentyfirst century CE.
Under Hussein Obumbler the closure of the PLO mission to Washington is unlikely. More importantly, if the USA was serious in bringing the mogrels to heel, it would terminate its State Dept. hostililty to a state of the Jewish people and shut down its Consulate-General in Jerusalem which functions as its embassy to the regimes in Gaza City and Ramallah.
Who is more stubborn, the Pal who refuse to recognize Israel or Bib insisting on creating a state that the Pal do not want?
@ Viiit: Agreed.
Of course, more prisoner releases. Sheesh. Pavlov’s dog is back.
Laura Said:
dear laura,
you definitely a lady after my own heart.
this pathetic idiocy leaves me totally speechless…
why, tango foxtrot, do the jews (and especially deluded israelis) insist on being more jewish than the rabbi?
it is indeed very noble to take the high road, but, WHOA!it does NOT apply to everyone!
live ammo should be the onyl reply to these subhumans.
Israel should be campaigning for all civilized countries to leave the UN
Let UN be the club for the Muslim and other backward countries.
Releasing terrorists because Israel is afraid of some UN recognition?
Tragic idiocy.
This means that Israel encourages unity of Hamas and Fatah
The the gas fields are of the Gaza shore, and Israel is negotiating with to P.A.
They should instead offer them some oil from Kuwait!
It really sickens me how Israel begs the “palestinians”. Who cares if they go to the UN to declare statehood, in which most countries will vote for it. It can’t happen if Israel doesn’t want it to. Why does Israel behave like the weaker party instead of behaving like they are in the driver’s seat?
Israel’s government also rewards Palestinian Arab extremism.
Which won’t bring peace closer.
The Associated press report is misleading. Never has the US implemented any punitive measures against the PA. On the contrary, they have been rewarded for every violation they have committed. Breaking all conditions to most agreements.