Israeli negotiators. A report aired Friday on Israel’s Channel 10 revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given the green light to negotiators – specifically to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and to attorney Yitzhak Molcho – to begin discussing the contours of final borders between Israel and what would become a Palestinian state, and was further considering announcing a settlement freeze, compromises that the Prime Minister’s office had consistently indicated it was unwilling to make.
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The Jerusalem Post reported that officials from the Prime Minister’s office denied the latest reports as well, which have the potential of painting the Israeli leader as granting critical concessions to the Palestinians on the eve of a decision by Ramallah to pursue and secure a unity agreement with the Iran-backed Hamas terror group. The Palestinian move, formally made by the Fatah coalition that controls Palestinian areas of the West Bank, was widely blasted by Jerusalem and Washington for derailing efforts at moving forward with a U.S.-backed peace initiative. Israel had subsequently decided to suspend talks pending confirmation regarding the progress and composition of any future unity government. Analysis published on Friday by the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (BICOM) cited a range of media reports indicating that Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had deliberately framed the agreement in a way that allowed the Palestinians to walk back their decision and quickly resume negotiations, generating speculation among analysts that Jerusalem was “leaving the door open to talks until it becomes clear what impact the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement will have.”
Israeli negotiators
President Barack Obama on Friday told reporters in Seoul that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction had been “unhelpful” in moving earlier this week to pursue an agreement with the rival Hamas faction that would among other things see the formation of a unity government filled with members of both groups.
Top U.S. officials quickly evaluated that the declaration severely undermined the peace process – State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday no fewer than four times that Israel could not be “expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist” – and the Israelis had subsequently suspended peace talks pending firm information about the composition of the new Palestinian government. At stake is the degree to which a Palestinian unity cabinet will meet the PA’s formal obligations to Israel, including a renunciation of violence and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist. Hamas figures had indicated earlier in the week and through Friday that a unity deal would not see them meeting such obligations, which Jerusalem had secured over the course of decades by making functionally irreversible territorial and security concessions, while Abbas has been insisting that the unity government would meet those commitments. Top U.S. and other Western diplomats – including Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, European Union foreign policy chiefs Catherine Ashton and Javier Solana, Middle East Envoy Tony Blair, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon – have consistently declared that any Palestinian government would be beholden to those obligations. A unity government with Hamas independently seems set to run afoul of black-letter U.S. legislation conditioning American assistance to the PA on the absence of terror-linked figures in general, and on keeping Hamas members out of Ramallah’s political institutions in particular. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday conveyed a statement by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) revealing that she intends to “work[] with the State Department on the logistics of suspending assistance” to the PA. The declaration echoed a range of others from members on both sides of the aisle.
Israeli negotiators.
