Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stressed on Sunday that no agreement had been reached on the issue of land swaps, telling Likud ministers that US Middle East envoy George Mitchell had yet to approach the Israeli government with such a proposal from the Palestinian side.
The prime minister's remarks came in response to a statement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday that the Palestinians and Israel have agreed on the principle of a land swap. Abbas said that aside from the initial agreement in principle, the two sides had not reached any further agreement in this regard.
The issue of the ratio of land Israel would give to the Palestinians in exchange for keeping settlement blocs has long been an issue of dispute, with the Palestinians demanding that the ratio be 1:1, and Israel offering less.
As Haaretz reports that Mahmoud Abbas asked U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell during their meeting in Ramallah Wednesday to clarify with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his stance on several issues. Among them, former prime minister Ehud Olmert's proposal on the borders and security arrangements for a future Palestinian state, as well as Netanyahu's views on the Palestinian response to that offer.
A source privy to the details of the conversation between Mitchell and Abbas told Haaretz that the Palestinian leader stressed that the Palestinians are still committed to the positions they presented in response to Olmert's offer, during negotiations held between August and December 2008.
"The points agreed upon with Olmert are agreements with the government of Israel," Abbas and his aides told Mitchell. "We are serious in our intentions and this finds expression in our obligation to honor our agreements."
As if there was No elections, and as if Olmerts plan ever reached a vote at the cabinet or aaproved by the Knesset, and would have never been approved.
Israeli officials, however, refused to discuss the content of what is being talked abnet, Knesset and the isel would ever be approved by cabiout with the Palestinians.
“Any public discussion of the content will make progress much more difficult, and we want to make progress,” one official said.
There is a feeling the Palestinians only entered into the proximity talks to avoid direct negotiations, and they would like them to reach a dead end, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a meeting with EU ambassadors in Israel on Sunday.
“There is real commitment and a will to reach a comprehensive agreement with the Palestinians on Israel’s part,” he told the ambassadors, but surmised the other side only seems to have entered the talks pro forma.
The Palestinian leadership’s declarations that they maintain the option of ‘armed struggle’ if talks do not proceed at a pace they approve, show they are not coming into the negotiations with clean hands, Lieberman said, adding, “there is no alternative to direct negotiations.”
Abbas Zaki, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and former Palestinian envoy to Lebanon, said on Sunday that Fatah does not rule out the possibility of resuming an “armedstruggle” against Israel if the US-sponsored proximity talks fail.