JERUSALEM — Israel on Sunday formally accepted an international proposal to return to peace negotiations with the Palestinians, but any immediate resumption of talks appeared unlikely as the Israelis and Palestinians differed sharply over the letter and spirit of the proposal.
A senior Palestinian official said over the weekend that after three days of deliberations, the Palestinian leadership had decided not to return to talks unless Israel halted all settlement construction and agreed to clear terms of reference for the negotiations — requirements that were perhaps implied but not spelled out in the Sept. 23 statement of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers, which is made up of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
After Israel’s advancement last week of plans for new housing in a contested area of Jerusalem, the Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday that it was now necessary for the quartet to state clearly “what it understands the terms of reference to be,” and then for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “to say, ‘Yes, we accept.’ ”
Despite weeks of intensive international diplomacy designed to deflect or minimize the impact of a contentious Palestinian bid for recognition of statehood and membership in the United Nations, the Israelis and Palestinians appear to be stuck at an impasse, just as they have been for the past year.
The last round of direct talks broke down soon after they started in September 2010 when a 10-month Israeli moratorium on construction in the West Bank Jewish settlements expired. Israel has refused an additional building freeze in territory captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, where the Palestinians envisage their future state.
Israel says that the Palestinians have made a strategic decision to seek recognition of an outline of a state without the give and take of negotiations and that last time they waited nine months before agreeing to start talks. Asked about the possibility of an additional moratorium, Mr. Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post last week, “We already gave at the office.”
The Palestinians, eager not to appear rejectionist, have pointed out what they say are the positive attributes of the quartet’s statement. Mr. Shaath said it contained “very few flaws.”
But the language of the statement was intentionally nonspecific in parts, employing codes meant to make it acceptable to both sides. The Palestinians are demanding clarity, saying that it is partly such diplomatic ambiguity that has left the Palestinians without a country after nearly 20 years of intermittent talks.
The quartet’s statement did not explicitly mention a settlement freeze, but it called on the two sides “to refrain from provocative actions” and cited their obligations under the 2003 “road map,” an American-backed peace plan that called for, among other things, a complete stop to all settlement activity.
The Palestinians say that it also accommodates their demand for the pre-1967 boundaries to serve as the basis for border talks.
The Israelis point out that the quartet’s statement specifies that talks should resume without preconditions. It sets a time frame for an agreement to be completed by the end of 2012. And it calls on the Israelis and Palestinians to deal first with borders and security, contrary to Israel’s position that all final status issues are interlocked and must be tackled simultaneously.
The rub remains the continued building in the settlements. A senior Israeli official said Sunday that this Israeli government was already “showing more restraint than any previous Israeli government” regarding building in the West Bank. But no Israeli government has ever agreed to freeze construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, he said, reiterating a long-held Israeli position and rejecting a crucial Palestinian demand.
The dispute over building in the areas of Jerusalem beyond the pre-1967 boundaries came into sharp relief again last week when Israel advanced plans for about a thousand new housing units in one such area, Gilo, which is home to 40,000 mostly Jewish residents on the southern edge of Jerusalem bordering the West Bank.
Touring Gilo with reporters on Sunday, the deputy foreign minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, said that this was “in the heart of a pulsating, vibrant city” and “an integral part of Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It cannot be divided and will not be divided,” he said, as cranes swung in the background and mechanical diggers worked on another development of 108 new units that was approved several years ago.
Israel intends to keep Gilo under any future deal with the Palestinians. But most of the world does not recognize Israeli sovereignty in the areas of Jerusalem that the Palestinians claim as part of their future nation and wants Israel to refrain from further building there so as not to prejudice the outcome of negotiations and as a sign of good faith.
The latest plans for 35 new apartment buildings extending down a steep, partly populated incline on an outer edge of Gilo elicited expressions of deep dismay from close allies, including the United States and Germany.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, telephoned Mr. Netanyahu on Friday and told him that the plans “raised doubts that the Israeli government is interested in starting serious negotiations,” her spokesman said in a statement cited by news reports.
Mr. Shaath, the Palestinian official, said that the advancement of the Gilo plans effectively “ended the quartet statement there and then.”
Source: nytimes.com