POLITICS-MIDDLE EAST: Talks Into The Night Without Progress

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Deborah Horan

LONDON, May 4 1998 (IPS) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talked into the night Monday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to seal a deal on the size of a long-overdue Israeli troop withdrawal from West Bank territory.

Bearing an U.S. initiative that calls on Israel to hand over an additional 13 percent of West Bank territory to Palestinians in return for greater effort to fight Islamic extremists, Albright met separately with each leader twice before exhausted negotiators broke for the night.

Talks were expected to resume Tuesday, an unexpected development that observers said may mean that the two sides are close to reaching a compromise that could put the Middle East peace process, stalled for 14 months, back on track.

After his first meeting with Albright, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the two sides stood a chance to make progress in the moribund negotiations if there was an “equal willingness” on the part of the Palestinians.

“We have come here to try to achieve a breakthrough,” the Israeli leader said. “I’m not sure it’s achievable at once. I think it’s possible to achieve progress if there’s an equal willingness to move forward on the other side.”

Palestinian president Yasser Arafat sounded a more urgent note: “Today is the day, now is the moment” to decide on an U.S. initiative to save the faltering Middle East peace process, he said.

In the weeks leading up to the London talks, U.S. officials had been pushing for a 13.1 percent withdrawal from territory exclusively under Israeli control and another 14 percent turn over of territory under joint control, top Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath said.

In addition, the U.S. package calls for a moratorium on Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza and for an Israeli commitment to carry out a third troop withdrawal in six months, Sha’ath said.

Palestinians have accepted the U.S. initiative. “I am committed to accepting the American initiative, although our rights are far beyond that initiative,” the 69-year-old Palestinian leader told reporters outside 10 Downing Street, where he had met with Blair.

Netanyahu has so far held his ground with an offer of nine percent, but the U.S. has been pushing hard for a breakthrough analysts here say it is likely that the two sides will strike a deal soon, possibly by Tuesday.

With negotiations deadlocked for more than a year, the U.S. apparently feels that time is running out for the two sides to reach a deal. A year from now, interim peace agreements will expire and officials fear that a political “vacuum” will ensue.

On Monday, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin warned of violence should the talks fail. “At this point, we do not have compelling evidence that the meetings will yield a breakthrough,” he said. “(But) we want these London meetings to be decisive… This stalemate has gone on too long.”

“The process going around in circles… can’t go on much longer,” he said. “A vacuum in the Middle East peace process will not serve the interests of the Israelis or the Palestinians.”

Arafat has repeatedly threatened to declare independence on May 5, 1999, the date that the interim peace accords expire. “It is our right and we will declare it,” Arafat said in Gaza last week.

On Monday, Netanyahu reportedly asked Albright what the U.S. response would be should Arafat unilaterally declare a Palestinian state when the interim peace agreements expire this time next year.

Netanyahu has implied that Israel would annex those parts of the West Bank not yet under Palestinian control.

Still, even with the greater sense of urgency, Israeli officials played down the chance of a major breakthrough. “We do hope for some incremental progress,” said David Bar-Illan, Netanyahu’s communications advisor. “(But) anybody who expects a dramatic breakthrough will be disappointed.”

While territory was the main focus of Monday’s talks, Israel also held out a list of demands that included pledges from Arafat to refrain from releasing jailed members of the Islamic radical Hamas group, to reduce the numbers of his police force and to amend the PLO charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction.

Israel has repeatedly demanded a greater Palestinian effort to crack down on Islamic extremists who have killed scores of Israelis in more than a dozen suicide operations since the first bomb exploded on a public bus in April 1994.

Analysts here say Palestinians are unlikely to agree to the first demand and unable to fulfill the second. “The third one he should give,” said Adel Darwish, an author and expert on the Middle East.

“You cannot have a charter calling for the abolition of your peace partner. But the first two (demands) Arafat cannot give,” Darwish added. “Arafat cannot genuinely control Hamas. And how can you expect Arafat to fight Hamas and at the same time want a reduction in his police force?”