RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM, 15 November 2007 — Israel’s Parliament yesterday moved to pre-empt concessions on the status of Jerusalem as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated his demand for Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish state. The maneuvering comes ahead an international peace meeting expected later this month in Annapolis in which Israel and the Palestinians are to lay out the basis for talks aimed at resolving the decades-old Middle East conflict.
But the two sides remain deeply divided over the content of a joint document they wish to present at the US talks, and the Palestinians have refused to accept Israel’s demand to recognize it as the state of the Jewish people.
During talks in Jerusalem with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Olmert said that “the starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians following the Annapolis meeting will be recognition of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.”
“The prime minister made it clear that from Israel’s point-of-view this issue is not subject to either negotiations or discussion,” Olmert’s office said. The Palestinians have already said they would not accept Israel’s demand, which would effectively be an implicit renunciation of their claim of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
“We recognize the state of Israel within its 1967 borders. We do not refer to the religion of any state but its borders. Such logic is unacceptable,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said earlier this week. Britain tried to inject some optimism into the peace efforts yesterday when Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged $500 million in aid for Palestinian reconstruction if there is “tangible progress” on improving regional security.
“If we can see tangible progress on security, then we, the United Kingdom, would be prepared to put a $500-million package of aid into this area so that economic reconstruction can take place,” he told the House of Commons.
But back in Jerusalem the Knesset backed a move requiring a two-thirds majority to change the city’s status in a future peace deal, in a bid to deter Olmert from granting Palestinians a capital in the city’s Arab east. Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City with its sites holy to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, during the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.
Right-wing Likud party MP Gideon Sa’ar, who proposed the bill, said it would send a strong message before the US meeting “that there is a broad consensus in Israel against concessions on Jerusalem.” The bill requires three further votes to become law.
Israel’s Haaretz daily reported yesterday, however, that the government plans to announce a freeze on settlement construction and declare a willingness to remove “illegal outposts” before the conference.
Israel and the Palestinians have been struggling to thrash out an agreed joint document for the conference that would serve as the basis for future negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state. Palestinians want the document to address core issues of the conflict — borders, the fate of refugees, settlements, and the status of Jerusalem — while Israelis prefer a more general statement of shared principles.
Olmert has vowed to proceed with peace talks on the basis of the 2003 road map peace plan, which calls on Israel to freeze settlement growth and to withdraw from outposts established after March 2001.
Meanwhile, Palestinian security services yesterday arrested 18 people, mostly members of the Hamas movement, in a northern West Bank village, police and Hamas members said. Police said those detained were wanted by the Palestinian Authority security services, four of them for alleged criminal activity.
