JERUSALEM – Headlines declaring President Obama is close to a Mideast peace deal are overly optimistic, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials involved in the negotiations.
One Palestinian official surmised the headlines are meant to generate positive public relations for the U.S. president.
“The only deal we are close to is the possibility of eventually beginning talks to one day lead to a peace deal,” said an official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau.
“Also there may be a photo opportunity next month between Netanyahu and [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas,” he said.
The official is with Netanyahu in Germany, where the prime minister met with European leaders as well as George Mitchell, Obama’s envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian arena.
The official said the U.S. and Israel are close to a compromise on freezing Jewish construction in the strategic West Bank but that no compromise has yet been reached.
He said Netanyahu wants a six-to-eight month freeze in the West Bank only and that housing projects already approved would be allowed to continue. The U.S., however, is demanding a total two-year freeze in both the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. Talks are set to continue next week in Washington.
Netanyahu today announced he was prepared to begin peace negotiations on every issue that Abbas was interested in raising, but he emphasized he reserved the right to raise “core” issues of his own.
Abbas today said he was willing to meet Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next month.
“If Abu Mazen (Abbas) really means what he has said, then this is a positive development,” Netanyahu said, speaking from Germany. “I’ve been saying for quite some time that I am ready to renew negotiations.”
According to both Israeli and Palestinian sources, Obama is pushing for the resumption of talks next month that would create a Palestinian state within two years.
A Palestinian diplomatic official said the U.S. is seeking a deal that will set the final borders of a Palestinian state immediately and negotiate other issues, such as security and water, at a later date.
The PA is seeking to use concessions from former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a starting point in new talks with Netanyahu, multiple Middle Eastern diplomatic sources told WND.
Olmert reportedly offered the Palestinians not only 95 percent of the West Bank and peripheral eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods but also other territories never before offered by any Israeli leader. The offer includes parts of the Israeli Negev desert as well as Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley just outside the Dead Sea.
WND reported exclusively last November that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice collected notes and documents from Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams to ensure the incoming U.S. administration would not need to start negotiations from scratch. PA sources said Rice’s notes have already been used by Obama’s team as the starting points for new Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Documents noting agreements during previous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been used in subsequent talks, sometimes as starting points. According to both Israeli and PA sources, American officials took detailed notes of talks at U.S.-brokered negotiations at Camp David in 2000 and then used points of agreement on key issues, such as borders, during recent rounds of intense Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Israeli and PA sources said Rice’s notes document agreements aimed at an eventual major West Bank withdrawal and would grant the PA permission to open official institutions in Jerusalem.
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