RAMALLAH/GAZA CITY, 11 October 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday laid out his most specific demands for the borders of a future independent state, calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 war.
Abbas’ claim comes as Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams are trying to hammer out a joint vision for a future peace deal in time for a US-hosted conference next month. In a new confidence-building gesture to Abbas, Israel agreed yesterday to grant residency permits to thousands of Palestinians who have been living illegally in the West Bank on expired visitors’ visas.
Abbas’ comments appeared to set the stage for tough negotiations, which are expected to include complicated arrangements such as land swaps and shared control over holy sites. Israel is seeking to retain parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In a television interview, Abbas has given for the first time a precise number for the amount of land he is seeking.
“The Palestinian people must have a continuous and viable state within 1967 borders. The area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip stands at 6,205 square kilometers (2,396 square miles) and we want these 6,205 square kilometers,” he said.
He said he would accept “border modifications here and there” but rejected any exchange of territory under any final peace deal. “This meeting (next month) must touch on the main questions, including borders, refugees, water, Jerusalem, settlements and security,” he said.
Israel wants to keep its major settlement blocks in the occupied West Bank, in exchange for giving the Palestinians equivalent amounts of land elsewhere.
“We have rejected in the past and we reject now a state with temporary borders. It will lead to an impasse that will last many, many years,” Abbas said.
The so-called road map for Middle East peace — dormant since its launch in 2003 — contained the option of creating a Palestinian state with temporary borders first, and determining the final borders later.
Washington called the conference, whose exact date, location and participant list have not yet been announced, in the latest bid to jumpstart a peace process that has been dormant for nearly seven years.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will next week hold talks with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on her seventh visit to the region this year.
Ahead of the US conference, Abbas and Olmert have held a series of one-to-one meetings, discussing the most intractable issues of their decades-old conflict.
Earlier this week Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams began trying to hammer out a joint document ahead of the November meeting, with a view of starting negotiations after the conference.
“The Americans say with confidence that it will work,” Abbas said referring to the November meeting, but added that failure “will not be a catastrophe.”
“The Palestinian people know that the resolution of their problems is complicated” and will not accept that an agreement be imposed on them.
“We are capable of saying ‘no’ when it is necessary and we have already done so in the past.” Olmert has come in for domestic criticism that he was moving too fast in his talks with Abbas, or that the Palestinian president — whose control has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas violently seized control of Gaza in mid-June — was too weak politically to implement any agreement reached.
The premier, while seeking to calm the fears and silence the critics, has vowed to push on with the revived talks. “I would like to announce here in the clearest way that I do not intend to look for excuses in order to avoid a peace process,” Olmert told the opening of the winter session of Parliament earlier this week.
— With input from agencies
