RAMALLAH: The Palestinians on Thursday rejected the idea of an Israeli presence on the eastern border of their future state, which was mooted by Israel’s hawkish prime minister.
“The Palestinian leadership will not accept the presence of a single Israeli soldier in the Palestinian territories after the end of the occupation,” Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, told AFP.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Israel would patrol the eastern border of any future state to prevent the smuggling of weapons, especially rockets like those fired from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
“The ability to proliferate into contiguous areas thousands of rockets and missiles ... is something that creates a monumental security problem,” he told foreign reporters in Jerusalem.
But the Palestinians said they would insist on the full sovereignty of any future state. “We will not accept anything less than a completely sovereign Palestinian state on all the territories with its own borders, resources and air space,” Abu Rudeina said.
“We will not accept any Israeli presence, either military or civilian, on our land, and we will not accept that our state be under Israeli protection.”
Abu Rudeina added that Netanyahu’s insistence on an Israeli border guard would “place more obstacles in the way of restarting peace talks.”
The dispute erupted as US Middle East envoy George Mitchell made his latest in a series of visits to the region aimed at convincing both sides to relaunch negotiations suspended during last year’s Gaza war.
Mitchell met Israeli officials on Thursday. The US envoy and Defense Minister Ehud Barak “talked of the measures that are needed to move forward the political process with the Palestinians,” the ministry said in a statement. The US envoy also met Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Netanyahu. He is scheduled to meet Abbas on Friday (today).
“This visit (by Mitchell) is an attempt to save what remains of the peace process, which Israel has paralyzed,” Abu Rudeina said.
“This is because of Israel’s refusal to completely halt settlements in all the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, especially in Jerusalem, which we consider a red line in any negotiations,” he added.
“There is no Palestinian state without Jerusalem.”
Netanyahu has refused to limit construction in Jerusalem, which Israel considers its “eternal, undivided” capital, but has said he is willing to meet Abbas face-to-face at any time.
“The Palestinians are piling demand upon demand. They should be told fair and square ‘get into the tent and start negotiating for peace’,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday. Slow-moving negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians came to a complete standstill more than a year ago during Israel’s massive offensive on the Gaza Strip.
Abbas has repeatedly said he would not return to the negotiating table until Israel imposes a complete halt to settlement construction in the occupied territories, but recently appeared open to a freeze for a fixed period of time. Before traveling to Israel, Mitchell held talks in Lebanon and Syria, where he stressed that both countries had a key role to play in a comprehensive Middle East peace.
In Madrid, the Spanish EU presidency pledged on Thursday to make every effort to ensure that peace negotiations resume “as soon as possible.”
“Our aim as the rotating EU presidency in these important times ... is to make efforts so that the negotiations and a return to the table can come about as soon as possible,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. “It’s important that the parties meet” but it is up to the two sides to decide “when and how,” he told a joint news conference with visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
“Spain has always had an important role to play in the Middle East as far as the process is concerned,” and “it is important for Spain to continue to play a role,” said Fayyad.
