Kerry in last-ditch effort to bring Palestinians to peace talks

The Palestinian leadership has decided to decline U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest peace proposal, saying the Palestinian Authority will not endorse a resumption of peace talks with Israel unless it is guaranteed that Israel agrees to discuss the general borders of a future Palestinian state, according to PA officials.

The decision, which was made after a stormy, high-level meeting of senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah and has effectively thrown a wrench in Kerry’s efforts to reignite the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, came on the heels of conflicting reports Thursday suggesting Jerusalem had agreed to the proposal. The Prime Minister’s Office denied the reports.

Kerry continued his diplomatic push on Friday meeting twice with Palestinian negotiators and holding telephone consultations with Israeli leaders in-between.

A Palestinian official told Israel Hayom that while PA President Mahmoud Abbas and 19 of the 21 Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee members who participated in the meeting were willing to endorse Kerry’s proposal, they could not agree on what guarantees to demand from Washington should the negotiations stall once more.

The official said the officials had refused to endorse the proposal because it was „riddled with holes” and failed to satisfy the Palestinians’ demands for a complete moratorium on settlement expansion, as well as on the issue of borders.

The Palestinian demands cast a cloud of uncertainty over months of U.S. mediation efforts. Israel is both wary and weary of agreeing to preconditions, arguing that such moves have not led to successful peace talks in the past. Palestinian officials said they wanted guarantees to ensure peace talks would lead to fruition.

Hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians toward talks, U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to work with Kerry „to resume negotiations with Palestinians as soon as possible,” according to a statement released by the White House late Thursday.

Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel would be willing to resume the peace talks without delay as long as the Palestinians forfeit their various preconditions.

After two separate meetings, Palestinian officials said they decided to send top negotiator Saeb Erekat to meet with Kerry „and inform him that the PA requires guarantees regarding the general borders,” PLO official Wasel Abu Yussef said.

Yussef said Erekat would also ask Kerry for more clarifications on what Israel expects from the negotiations, adding that the Palestinians did not want to reject Kerry’s efforts to restart the peace talks outright.

Another Palestinian official who was present at the meeting said the committee members decided they did not want to be „pressured into making a decision.”

The Palestinians have decided to form a committee to further review Kerry’s proposal. Secretary-General of the PLO’s Executive Committee Yasser Abed Rabbo, who will head the committee, told Israel Hayom that Abbas might meet with Kerry, as well as with King Abdullah of Jordan, again, before making his final decision on the matter.

„We greatly appreciate U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts and tenacity but his current proposal does not bode well for the future of the negotiations,” Fatah spokesman Amin Maqbul said in a statement.

According to Maqbul, the proposal lacked the „proper incentives” for the Palestinians to resume talks and failed to meet „Fatah’s demands for a full and immediate suspension of all settlement expansion, the release of Palestinian prisoners who were jailed prior to the Oslo Accords and basing the negotiations on the 1967 borders.”

Maqbul’s statement stressed that „unless provided with explicit guarantees, the Palestinians will not resume the peace talks.”

Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday that Kerry’s efforts were „a waste of time … I think that we are going to go again into a state of political waste. That’s why we need as Palestinians to draw a conclusion from it towards the building of a Palestinian strategy which is focused on the commitment to the rights, the principles, the perseverance and resistance as well as the political and diplomatic work at the same time.”

A source in the Prime Minister’s Office said Israel was waiting for Kerry’s official announcement on the peace talks: „There is nothing new under the sun — we are still waiting to hear if Abbas will agree to resume the talks without preconditions.”

Sources in the coalition vehemently denied reports Thursday suggesting Israel had agreed to base the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War, with additional land swaps, adding that they had no knowledge of any goodwill gestures Israel may have agreed to afford the Palestinians to coax them into resuming negotiations.

U.S. officials on Thursday played down hopes that negotiations would begin soon. „There are currently no plans for an announcement on the resumption of negotiations,” Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Kerry, told reporters in Jordan.

Another U.S. official said Kerry — who has been on a shuttle diplomacy mission to the Middle East for months in search of a formula that would allow the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to resume — would consult with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Friday before ending his visit to the region and returning to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Habayit Hayehudi Chairman MK Naftali Bennett threatened Thursday that his party would resign from the government if Israel agreed to base peace talks on the 1967 borders.

„Habayit Hayehudi will not remain a part of a government that agrees to negotiate the 1967 borders for one single second. Jerusalem, our capital, is not now — nor will it ever be — up for negotiation,” he said.

Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi) told Army Radio that the Palestinians’ demands were „unacceptable and unrealistic.”

Opposition Leader MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor), however, urged Netanyahu to resume the peace talks. In a letter sent to the prime minister and quoted by Army Radio, she wrote, „The European Union’s financial ban is a painful reminder of the strategic and economic dangers of the prolonged diplomatic stalemate. Continuing to be passive would be shrugging off your responsibility and a demonstration of a lack of leadership.”