BEIT JALA: Efforts to reach an Israel-Palestinian peace deal may need to be extended for another year, if parties agree on key issues by the time the current round of talks wraps up in April, the chief Palestinian negotiator has said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry launched nine months of direct talks between the sides in July after a three-year stalemate, and has insisted he is aiming for a full deal and not an interim agreement by April 29.
However, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the process was likely to be a lot slower.
“We are not talking about a peace treaty on the 29th of April, we are talking about a framework agreement,” Erakat told journalists in Beit Jala near Bethlehem on Wednesday.
He said the deal would “specify the borders, percentage of the (prisoner) swaps, security arrangements, Jerusalem status, refugees and then that’s the skeleton. Without achieving that you cannot draft a single word of the treaty.
“Once you reach the framework agreement, between that day to reach a comprehensive treaty, on all core issues... you need six to 12 months in the best case.”
Kerry says concrete progress has been made in the latest round of peace talks, but details will remain under wraps.
The top US diplomat has made nine trips to the Middle East since March.
“I’m personally encouraged that very tough issues are beginning to take shape,” he said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” broadcast over the weekend.
“But we’ve agreed not to be talking about what we’re doing because it just creates great expectations. It creates pressure. It creates opposition, in some cases.”
In remarks broadcast on army radio yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue “developing” settlements following reports of US pressure ahead of a fresh round of Palestinian prisoner releases due later this month.
“We will not stop, even for a moment, building our country and becoming stronger, and developing... the settlement enterprise,” he told members of his rightwing Likud faction.
Netanyahu’s comments, made late on Wednesday, came as Kerry fights for the survival of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which were launched in late July but have been severely strained by Israel’s persistent settlement drive.
Late on Wednesday, the Haaretz news website reported that Kerry and other senior US officials had urged Netanyahu and his cabinet “to exercise maximum restraint in announcing new construction,” in tandem with the release on December 29 of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners.
Two previous rounds of prisoner releases in August and October have been accompanied by Israeli announcements of fresh construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state, sparking deep anger in Ramallah.
But in his remarks on Wednesday, Netanyahu appeared to rebuff any pressure from Washington, blaming the absence of any peace agreement on the Palestinians’ refusal to recognise Israel as the Jewish state.
“I know that people keep telling us that there is no peace because of the settlements, because of our presence in Judaea and Samaria and it’s not true,” the premier said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
“There is no peace because of the ongoing opposition to the existence of a national Jewish homeland within any borders, and we have the right to a state just like any other people.”
AFP
