With five days left until the settlement construction moratorium ends,
talks are
continuing in the US between Israeli, Palestinian Authority and American
officials to find a “creative” solution to the issue, even as Jerusalem
was
preparing for the possibility the PA may indeed walk away from direct
talks over
the matter.
Government officials said Tuesday that “contingency plans”
were being drawn up for dealing with expected diplomatic ricochets if
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas carries out his threat to
quit the
talks if the moratorium is not extended. Various arguments are being
prepared to
deflect the blame if the issue is not resolved, according to the
officials.
RELATED:PM hints at placing IDF forces in PA state after any dealWeek before freeze end, US tries to broker compromise In the meantime, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s chief
negotiator Yitzhak Molcho, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and President Shimon
Peres were all in the US holding discussions at various levels on ways to
overcome the impasse.
Netanyahu, on a trip to Ashkelon and Sderot on
Tuesday, deflected questions regarding one “creative” way that has been
floated
in recent days, namely for the US to release Jonathan Pollard – who has
been
jailed in the US for 25 years after being convicted of spying for Israel
– in
exchange for an Israeli agreement to extend the freeze by three
months.
“We don’t need a special event to raise the issue of Pollard,”
Netanyahu said. “I spoke about this during my first meeting with
President
Obama, and I spoke about it with the Americans a number of times,
without a
connection to this [the settlement moratorium]. We want to bring him
back to
Israel after 25 years in American jails.”
The prime minister also
refrained from answering questions on whether construction in the
settlements
would resume after the moratorium ended Sunday night, saying to ask him
on
Monday.
Netanyahu once again urged Abbas to recognize Israel as the
nation-state of the Jewish people, saying that his failure to do so
raised
questions about his true intentions, and whether the Palestinians hoped
to flood
Israel with refugees to erode its Jewish majority, or perhaps to carve
“sub-states” out of Israel in areas where there are large Arab
populations.
The prime minister’s comments came a day after Abbas, in an
interview with the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, said sarcastically
that for
all he cares, Israel could “call itself the Israeli Zionist Jewish
Empire.”
Abbas reiterated that negotiations would only continue under a
settlement freeze, and if the settlement moratorium would be extended
for one
month, he would remain in peace talks for one month.
If, in the end, an
agreement with the PA would be reached, Netanyahu said, “it is clear
that it
will have to come before the people for a decision one way or
another.”
As such, he said, he would consider Likud MK Ophir Akunis’s
proposal to bring a bill to the Knesset’s winter session next month
mandating
that any agreement with the Palestinians be voted on in a national
referendum.
Netanyahu has not publicly declared whether “bringing the
issue to the people” means through a referendum, or perhaps through
calling
early elections.
In New York Tuesday,
Palestinian
Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad left an Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee meeting at the UN furious
due to an
argument he had with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who refused
to agree
to a version of the meeting’s summary because it included the words “two
states.”
Ayalon suggested instead that
it read “two states for two peoples – Jewish and Palestinian,” and
demanded
guarantees that committee donations don’t go towards incitement or
boycotting of
Israeli goods.
On Sunday, to celebrate the end of the freeze, Likud
activists led by MK Danny Danon plan to rally at the Revava settlement
in
Samaria and hold a cornerstone-laying ceremony for a new neighborhood
there.
National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau (Israel Beiteinu)
said that, come Sunday, life will move forward in Judea and Samaria.
“We
will resume building,” he said, as he toured the Har Bracha settlement
in
Samaria.
“Next week we will see the Israeli government fulfill its
obligation to continue construction in Judea and Samaria. Credibility is
important for any government, particularly one that is in the midst of
negotiations. Therefore, it is important to hold to the government
decision,”
said Landau.
Regarding the security situation in the South, Netanyahu
warned Hamas not to fire rockets and missiles at Israel.
“Our first
commitment is to security, and I recommend that Hamas and the other
[terror]
organizations not test our determination to respond to the [missile]
fire,” he
said in a speech in Ashkelon, after being presented with parts of
missiles that
landed in the city.
“I said that shootings will get a quick response, and
this has lowered the amount of missiles,” he said.
“There were shootings
recently, and we responded and hit Hamas targets, including a senior
Hamas
official,” he added. “We will continue with this policy.”
Tovah Lazaroff
and Jerusalem Post
staff
contributed to this report.