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Peace Process

Non-compliant PA ready for final status talks


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
April 14, 2005

Despite having failed for more than 10 years to fulfill its most basic and pressing peace obligation, the Palestinian Authority says it is ready to enter final status negotiations and conclude an agreement with Israel.

According to the Palestinian National Authority State Information Service (IPC), PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas is eager to find a speedy resolution to all outstanding issues and put an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

A spokesman for Abbas said the basis for final status talks must be a full Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders.

Israel, however, insists the basis for even moving to the second phase of the US-backed Road Map peace plan must be the implementation of the PA’s decade-old commitment to disarm and dismantle the anti-Jewish terrorist infrastructure operating out of areas under its control.

Despite its non-compliance (while Israel has transferred over 98% of the Palestinian Arab population to PA control), the “Palestinian” leadership claims it is Israel that is wasting “precious time”.

Abbas praised his own “tremendous achievement” in convincing Hamas and other terror groups to temporarily stop murdering Jews, and expressed shock that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was still complaining about his performance.

In their meeting Tuesday, Sharon told US President George W. Bush that the peace process remained stalled because of Abbas’s failure to deliver on his promises to Israel and the international community. Sharon indicated Abbas may not be strong enough to actually curb terror and end corruption, and could lose control to more radical elements.

Abbas accused Sharon of trying to freeze the peace process, while chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said if Israel allowed it, a final peace deal could be achieved in less than six months.

In an indication of just how far the peace process is from success, however, both sides this week firmly reiterated their positions regarding the presence of Jewish communities in Israel’s biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.

“…Without an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders [and the removal of all Jewish settlements] there would be no peace in the region,” an aide to Abbas told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.

Following Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, the PA issued a statement “stressing the leadership's rejection of including any illegal settlement [sic] in the future peace agreement,” the IPC reported.

Sharon, meanwhile, used his visit to the US to again highlight his insistence on Israel retaining control over the large settlements of Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Etzion Bloc.

Sharon said construction in those communities would continue, and that they would eventually be annexed into sovereign Israel.

Bush told reporters following his meeting with the prime minister that the US believes the reality of major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria must be taken into account, but that the two sides would have to agree on any final status changes.

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