No more redeployment maps - Israel piles demands
The Israeli ministerial team preparing maps that determine the scope of the second phase withdrawal of Israeli troops has stopped its work in light of continued differences in guidelines presented by both defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai and infrastructure minister Ariel Sharon, sources said Wednesday.
The sources noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not take with him any detailed plans for the second phase withdrawal in the West Bank and therefore "there is no need to continue works on the maps."
Netanyahu, who is due to leave to Washington next Monday for a summit meeting with President Bill Clinton, has asked his ministers to continue their discussions of the principles for the final status agreements with the Palestinians which will determine the scope of the second phase redeployment. Only when the shape of the final status arrangements is known to the Israeli government, the scope of the second phase redeployment can be defined precisely, Israeli sources said.
Meanwhile, Palestinians continued their criticism of Netanyahu's list of demands and alleged violations which he intends to carry to Washington after his aides hand them over to the Palestinian negotiators. Chief Palestinian negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erekat, said the new conditions presented by the Israeli government "are a new game that aims to create new pretexts for not implementing the agreed upon clauses and to prevent any possible success for the forthcoming summit meetings in Washington."
Erekat said Palestine had fulfilled all its commitments in the interim agreements, including those included in the Hebron Protocol of last year. "It is Israel that should honor its commitments. There are 34 violations by Israel of the interim agreements and it seems that Israel does not have any intention to implement any of those clauses," he said.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had told reporters in Amman after his meeting with King Hussein of Jordan on Tuesday night that the Washington summit meetings will be the last chance for peace in the Middle East and the last chance to put the peace process back on track. Arafat expressed hopes that President Clinton will be able to convince Benjamin Netanyahu that the Washington meetings are the last chance for peace."
In its report prepared by cabinet secretary Dany Naver, Israel demanded an almost complete annulment of the Palestinian covenant as one of the preconditions it is demanding for the implementation of the second phase of further redeployment. Besides, it called on Palestine to hand over some 34 Palestinians suspected of carrying out anti-Israel attacks. In a statement published in Wednesday's Haaretz daily a senior US source said that the US wants that both Arafat and Netanyahu show flexibility in their meetings with President Clinton next week. "Every party understands the difficulties of the other one. There should be some pragmatism and it is forbidden for one party to present conditions that the other side is unable to fulfill." The source hinted that Palestine cannot agree with Israel's demand to extradite the 34 Palestinians to her hands.
Israel demanded in the document that the Palestinian National Council’s (PNC) Legal Committee convene in order to immediately cancel some 95 percent of the Palestinian National Charter. Thus the annulment would ultimately mean that the covenant is devoid of content, since only four out of five clauses are to remain intact.
In addition, Israel has demanded that the PNC be convened in order to approve the annulment with 2/3 house majority. Palestinian officials, however, insist that the charter had already been changed on 24 April last year. “Even were the members of the PNC to gather and sing Bitar’s anthem (Biter is the ideological precursor of the present day Likud) Benjamin Netanyahu would not fulfill his obligations. These are merely evasive tactics. That much is now clear. I want to say that the PNC will not convene on this issue again, period. Whoever wants clarifications on this issue can get them from attorney Yoel Zinger, Uri Savir and the Americans,” said Dr. Ahmad Tibi, special advisor to Arafat on Israeli affairs. Zinger was the legal advisor of the Israeli delegation to the Oslo talks and Savir was director general of the foreign ministry under Shimon Peres in the former government.
The second phase of further redeployment is affecting more than the coalition. The opposition is also torn between the desire to promote the peace process and the aspiration to topple the Netanyahu government. This rift became openly visible Tuesday when six Labor Knesset members endorsed Shimon Peres’ position and announced that they too would vote in favor of the second phase of further redeployment, even if it is presented to the Knesset as a vote of confidence in Netanyahu. The six Labor rebels, as were labeled by their fellow party members, are Yona Yahav, Rafi Elul, Micha Goldman, Rafi Edri, Nawaf Masalha and Saleh Tarif. In a letter addressed to their faction chairman they demanded that they not be forced to vote according to the party line with regard to the second phase. “Should the government decide to pursue the path of peace according to the Oslo Accords that were led by the Rabin-Peres government, and should the government’s proposal be acceptable to the Palestinians and Americans, there is no just cause for us not to grant it our support,” they wrote. There were many who criticized the move within the Labor party, but the toughest of all was one voiced by Knesset member Dalia Itzik. She said: “Whoever votes confidence in Netanyahu, is committing a sin against peace and is postponing it.”