C
Cao Pi
Guest
PLO wants map from U.S. with future Israeli border
By Tom Perry RAMALLAH, West Bank | Wed Oct 13, 2010 7:52am EDT
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinians are seeking a map from the United States showing where Israel sees its final borders and making clear whether they include Palestinian land and homes, an official said on Wednesday. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Yasser Abed Rabbo was responding to a U.S. call for the Palestinians to present their own ideas in response to an Israeli proposal they recognize Israel as a Jewish state in return for curbs on settlement building -- a declaration they have long opposed.
"What is required from the American administration and Israel is that they present us with the map of the state of Israel that they want us to recognize," Abed Rabbo told Reuters. "Is this map on the '67 borders or does it include Palestinian land and the homes we live in?" he said, referring to the year when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a Middle East war. The settlement issue has derailed U.S.-backed peace talks which began on September 2.
The Palestinians say they will not resume U.S.-backed negotiations until Israel halts settlement building on occupied land where they aim to found a state. An Israeli freeze on new home building in the occupied West Bank expired on September 26. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would be willing to request another freeze from his cabinet if the Palestinians recognized Israel as a Jewish state.
He said it would be a "trust-building step," while some Palestinian and Israeli commentators questioned whether the proposal was only a ploy to try to shift blame onto the Palestinians should the peace process collapse. The Palestinians ruled out the idea -- something they see as a major concession that would be tantamount to political suicide for a leadership whose credibility has already been badly damaged by the failure of past peace talks.
U.S. SEES ISRAEL AS JEWISH STATE
U.S. State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said on Tuesday Netanyahu had "offered his thoughts on both what he's willing to contribute to the process, and what he thinks he needs for his people out of the process. We would hope that the Palestinians would do the same thing."
The United States recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, Crowley said.
Abed Rabbo's demand for a map echoed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's call for clear terms of reference for the peace talks. Netanyahu's predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said he showed Abbas a map offering him 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the West Bank, with the difference made up by a proposed land swap of 5.8 percent and a safe-passage corridor between the territory and the Gaza Strip.
But the Palestinians fear Netanyahu, who has not signed on publicly to Olmert's blueprint, has no intention of allowing the establishment of a viable state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem, which Israel also captured in 1967 and annexed, as their capital. Israel has said it intends to keep major settlement blocs in any future agreement and, citing security concerns, Netanyahu has called for retention of Israeli troops along the Jordan River, the likely eastern border of a future Palestinian state.
"We are ready to recognize, once again, the state of Israel if Washington gives us a map of the borders of that state so we know if they include our land and homes in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem," Abed Rabbo said. The PLO recognized the state of Israel in 1993 at the outset of the peace process. At the same time, Israel also recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians say recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would compromise the rights of Arab citizens of Israel who make up 20 percent of the population. It would also effectively forgo the right of return of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes in Arab-Israeli wars to return to territory that is now Israel. Their fate is one of the "final-status" issues in the talks.
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta; editing by Ralph Boulton)
