JERUSALEM: Israel’s prime minister has increased the amount of occupied territory he wants to keep after any peace deal with the Palestinians, Israeli radio reported yesterday, a move that could complicate US-backed efforts to reach an accord.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman declined to comment on the report that he had added a bloc of Israeli-settled land near the Palestinian governmental seat in the occupied West Bank to a list of enclaves Israel intends to retain.
That would leave 13 percent of the West Bank in Israeli hands, Israel’s Army Radio said, a prospect likely to dismay Palestinians who want the area for a future state.
A Palestinian official, who asked not to be identified, rejected the notion of Israel keeping large clusters of settlements.
“We are saying that once we agree on the withdrawal to 1967 borders, we can accept minor exchanges of land on a case-by-case basis,” the official said, referring to lines - described by Israel as indefensible - predating the war in which it captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
According to the report, Netanyahu told US Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel intends to hold on to the Beit El settlement enclave in addition to the Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel blocs it has long said it would keep.
Beit El, north of Jerusalem, is next to the city of Ramallah, where Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is headquartered.
Army Radio said Netanyahu had also departed from past peace blueprints that had envisaged an equal trade of land inside Israel for any West Bank areas it retained.
Instead, the station reported, Netanyahu has offered to buy some of the settlement land from the Palestinians, but that they had rejected such a deal.
The radio attributed its information to an anonymous source familiar with the details of five-month-old, US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Army Radio said Netanyahu spoke to Kerry about a biblical connection to Beit El, and its depiction in the Book of Genesis as the place where Jacob dreamt about a ladder to heaven.
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Israel Radio yesterday that keeping settlers in the valley was vital to Israel’s security interests.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most countries consider the settlements illegal.
REUTERS
