President Shimon Peres on Monday praised the new peace initiative
introduced by the Quartet of Middle East mediators on Friday, saying the plan creates a new opportunity to resume direct negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.
Peres said that both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas had turned to their own supporters in their
respective speeches to the
UN General Assembly on Friday, but that no effort was made to lessen the gaps between the positions of the two sides.
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Abbas: Decision on UN bid will take weeks, not months"We would want a situation in which the political distance between Jerusalem and Ramallah was not greater than the geographical distance between them," he stated.
Earlier on Sunday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel should accept the Quartet's proposal to begin negotiations without preconditions, in an interview with Israel Radio.
He said that even though he has reservations about the proposal, he hoped the Palestinians would respond to the initiative and begin serious dialogue with Israel.
The talks can open on any subject, Lieberman said, but from Israel's standpoint the most important issue is security. The foreign minister said he hoped the Palestinians understood that it was in their interest to focus on the political process and to postpone the vote on their statehood bid.
He warned that any one-sided move would lead to an Israeli response.
"We must be grateful to the United States for their assistance in events surrounding the embassy in Cairo and [Obama's]
General Assembly speech, and we should therefore accept the International Quartet's proposal, despite reservations," Lieberman said.
"Mahmoud Abbas fled immediately after his
speech, so that we could not, God forbid, negotiate," the foreign minister said. "The Palestinians make up excuses not to negotiate all the time. Those who want excuses will find them. Mahmoud Abbas continues to demand the right of return, and if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria, he will still want to send the refugees to Israeli territory ".
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
had said that he would not give his opinion of the Quartet's proposal until he had returned to Ramallah and discussed its provisions with Palestinian leadership there. He reiterated the return to 1967 borders and halting of settlement construction as pre-conditions to negotiations.
The Middle East Quartet – the US, EU, Russia and the UN – has been
trying for months to come up with a formula that would enable direct
talks. Its formula was released on Friday afternoon, after Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas formally submitted a letter to UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon seeking full UN membership.
The Quartet statement urged the parties “to overcome the current
obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
without delay or preconditions.”
Acknowledging that talks by themselves will not reestablish trust, the
Quartet proposed the following: a “preparatory meeting” between the
parties within a month to agree to an agenda and a “method of proceeding
in the negotiation.” The two sides will commit that the objective is to
“reach an agreement within a time frame agreed to by the parties but
not longer than the end of 2012.”
