Three-way summit being contemplated
The U.S. is reportedly working on a possible three-way summit meeting between Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Secretary Albright and Premier Netanyahu sometime next January provided there is an agreement on the second phase of Israeli troop redeployment in the West Bank.
The meeting, US officials hope, should result in a general deal that covers the second phase of redeployment, a time-out in the construction of Jewish settlements, and the renewal of security cooperation between Palestine and Israel. Israel will not publicly announce a halt to construction on Jewish settlements, but will make a gesture in order to encourage the negotiations, and in this context it is expected to reduce construction in the territories considerably, along with the appropriation of lands and the destruction of houses. The term "significant reduction" has yet to be defined.
But Palestinian official sources on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of such a meeting taking place as long as Israel insists on the cancellation of the third phase of troop redeployment and continues to promote the security zone concept even before the start of the final status talks between the two sides. A Palestinian official in Ramallah said Tuesday that Israel has so far played only with percentages and is trying to create the impression that things are moving ahead. "We are in limbo and any talk of progress achieved in negotiations with Israel is simply exaggerated," he said.
According to leaks published by the Israeli press, some 42 out of the 144 Jewish settlements in the West Bank are to be excluded from the Israeli map of national interests. Those settlements include large ones such as Kiryat Arba near Hebron, Beit El and Ofra near Ramallah, and Kidoumim near Nablus. There has not been any official announcement by Israel that those maps were the real ones but a senior government official was quoted as saying that the leaking of maps to the media was meant to serve Israel in the upcoming negotiations. According to a report in Haaretz daily Tuesday, the exclusion of those settlements means they have no strategic importance, or using the words of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, are political settlements.
The senior government official rejected criticism for the leaking of maps to the media, saying that there is an advantage to the release of these now-being-discussed maps, as public discussion could lead to the forging of a national consensus, and international understanding. The source said that everyone must know Israel's demands, and the red lines, just as everyone knows the Palestinian demands.
The scope of the Israeli withdrawal in the second stage will not be less than 10 percent, Israeli sources said, and noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made such a commitment to the US a week ago. Senior sources in the US State Department were quoted as saying that in contacts between Israel and the US, a long list of many subjects acceptable to both sides has been worked out, according to which Israel will submit withdrawal numbers and the precise regions only in January. The US government, the guidelines said, does not expect Netanyahu to relay to Secretary Madeleine Albright in their meeting Thursday, details of the withdrawal.