Moving ahead in final status talks
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 10/30/1999

Israel and the Palestinians are due to start their final status talks this week after heads of the negotiating delegations met Friday for the first time since Israel named its ambassador to Jordan, Oded Eran, as head of the Israeli delegation to the final status talks.

Eran and Palestine minister of information and cultural affairs, Yasser Abed Rabbo, agreed that to start their working sessions later this week and expressed hopes that the Oslo summit on Monday between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, US President Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak would help push the process forward.

Palestinian sources played down the expectations of the Oslo meeting noting that the main guidelines reported in the Israeli press as being prepared by Barak for the final status do not sound promising at all. Barak, press reports said, would offer the Palestinians to set up a state of their own on no more than 18 percent of the West Bank in areas currently under full Palestinian control. In the Oslo summit, Barak will seek help from the US President to help convince President Arafat accept the Israeli offer.

The chance that the final status negotiations will start this week, meanwhile, is no guarantee that Israel and the Palestinians will indeed meet the target date which Barak has set for formulating a framework agreement for the permanent settlement. The swiftly approaching February 2000 target date and the nature of the talks make meeting such a target date difficult. Though heads of the two delegations were already named, both Palestinian and Israeli officials do not exclude the chance of having back channels for secret talks that would form the real negotiations between the two parties away from the press and the public eye.

Barak continues to push for total separation between Israel and the Palestinian areas. During a cabinet meeting last week, he explained that the need for a physical separation as a "logical imperative from a political, security, moral and economic standpoint." "We are talking about a separation that will create good neighbourly relations, mutual respect and cooperation, and give expression to the interests of both sides," he said.

The separation plan, prepared by former police minister Moshe Shahal of the Labour Party, calls for electrical fences, barriers, trenches, and the like to be installed along the borders that will separate between the two entitiess. Barak, however, said that separation plan should not affect the Palestinian economy and that Palestinian workers should continue to go to work in Israel because "the development of the Palestinian economy is also in the long-term security interest of Israel."

Previous Stories:
  Hawatemah denies any political bargaining for his return to Palestine   (10/29/1999)
  US first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to visit Israel   (10/29/1999)
  Palestinian monetary authority discusses issuing Palestinian currency   (10/28/1999)

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