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Israel confirms Netanyahu, Fayyad meeting for talks

04 April 2012 18:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are expected to meet after next week’s Passover holiday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

While the official, who requested anonymity, said that the exact date and venue are yet to be announced, local media said that the high-level PNA delegation will deliver a letter from President Mahmoud Abbas on terms for restarting long-stalled stalled peace talks.

In the PNA’s letter, Abbas blames Netanyahu for the impasse in the diplomatic process, according to news reports.

Among the delegation are PLO Executive Committee Secretary Yasser Abed Rabbo and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, Palestinian sources told Xinhua.

For its part, the Israeli government is also preparing a letter of terms for a resumption of negotiations, officials told the Haaretz daily.

Israel’s demands, allegedly, are to include talks in which all the core issues will be on the agenda, with no preconditions, and a call for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, as well as effective security arrangements, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Earlier this week in Cairo, Palestinian sources said that Abbas wrote Netanyahu that, "You have made the PA (Palestinian Authority) a non-authority. You have taken away from the PA all its commitments and what it was doing and supervising. Now we have been left with nothing."

In response to a question at a press conference Xinhua attended on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Netanyahu rejected reports that he had turned down meeting with Palestinians sent to deliver the letter. "I will be pleased to receive a letter from Abu Mazen (Abbas)," he said, adding "I intend to relate to that letter, I think that is important."

"There is no way to conclude negotiations if you don’t start them, and until this time the Palestinians have chosen not to conduct negotiations," he said, adding, "I hope they will change that position in coming months. We are willing."

"Netanyahu’s letter will be a response to Abbas’ letter," a senior government official told the Haaretz daily.

"We will see what he writes and finalize our response. At any rate, the message will be that Israel is interested and willing to advance the negotiations with the Palestinians. The goal is to jump start the talks and not merely exchange correspondence for the protocol," the source said.

At the press conference, Netanyahu stressed that "We want to reach a settlement with the Palestinians because, I don’t want a two-nation state," continuing "I also want to insure the survival of a Jewish state. Not only separation but also security... If the Palestinians don’t negotiate now, they will later. I am committed to maintaining the Jewish character of the country."

Erekat and Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molho recently held a secret meting in Jerusalem to discuss the letter’s wording, according to the newspaper on Tuesday.

Political analysts who spoke with Xinhua in the wake of exploratory meeting held in Jordan’s capital Amman between the sides at the beginning of the year said Abbas’ letter represented an official declaration of failure of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

"The proxy-negotiations in Amman failed, and the direct talks preceding them did not work out either," said Prof. Samir Awwad of Birzeit University in Ramallah.

Jordan in January hosted a series of meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to explore the possibility of resuming their moribund direct talks, which have been stalled since September 2010 when a 10-month Israeli freeze on West Bank settlement construction ended, a gesture originally imposed as a confidence-building measure at U.S. President Barack Obama’s request.

Since then, Abbas has demanded that Israel renew the freeze and that pre-1967 ceasefire lines delineate the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu rejected these demands, however, arguing that the freeze was a onetime offer, and that such ceasefire lines would leave Israel with indefensible borders and an international airport within mortar range from nearby West Bank hills.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya recently told Xinhua that he was not surprised by Abbas’ decision to write the letter because it was in line with his strategy.

"Abbas never wanted to carry on the negotiations. It has been very clear that the strategy of the West Bank-based PNA, which has been a failure so far, is to force Israel into concessions by international pressure," Spyer said.