Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres

"Landep News"

Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres

Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath announced on Tuesday that a meeting between president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli president Shimon Peres was cancelled.
The two leaders were expected to meet in the capital of Jordan, Amman, for a new round of negotiations, when Shimon Peres announced that the meeting was cancelled because he had not been able to compromise with Prime Minister Banyamin Netanyahu on reopening negotiations, and so nor he had nothing substantial to offer the Palestinian leader from him.
Speaking for the army radio, Shaath, who characterized the two presidents as long-time friends, said that Peres called Abbas and proposed the meeting in Amman, adding: “I have something important to tell you that would reopen negotiations.”
Peres is said to have cancelled the negotiations so that he may not lose credibility with his Palestinian counterpart, thus preventing the corrosion of trust between them.
As for Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, the Palestinian negotiator said on the radio interview that this was a new idea introduced by the Jewish prime minister and that it was not tabled in 1996 and 1999.
He added that Palestinians could not recognize Israel as a Jewish state because that would make impossible the life of Palestinians and Arabs in this state, and would also complicate the matters of the refugees.
He added that the right of the refugees to return to the lands taken by Israel is embedded in the United States Resolution 194, which Israel admitted as a precondition of its own admission as a full member of the United Nations.
The matter, Shaath added, was included in the talks in Madrid and Oslo, and consequently it is a matter opened for debate, which cannot be dismissed by Netanyahu or by anyone else.

Map of Israel and Palestinian Territories

The question of the refugees has always been included as topic to all previous negotiations and cannot be dismissed now. Shaath added that there were many Israelis ready to talk about it and settle it.
Palestinians and Israelis are attempting to resume negotiations a month before the scheduled U.N. autumn general assembly, when Palestinians intend to demand full membership of the organization, thus having their state recognized de facto by the international body.
Although Israel can count of a substantial support of the United States and of many members of the European Union, the proposition may acquire enough votes in order to pass, considering that Palestinians say they have already enlisted the support of more than 100 member states.
Israel has manifested its constant refusal to acknowledge any state of Palestinians on other ground than negotiations, and said that the recognition of a state by UN would practically change nothing in the reports between the two parties, until negotiations would decide the borders and the status of the Palestinian state.
Palestinians are asking for a state composed of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as capital. In other words, the borders before 1967 annexation of territories by Israel.
Americans proposed a variable that would include in the state of Palestine the same surface of land as before 1967, thus permitting the borders to be delimited so that they may take into account the new realities, with Jewish settlements already established in the West Bank.
Settlement building was the reason of the stalemate of direct talks launched last year and brokered by the Obama administration.
After two rounds of negotiations, the settlements were resumed and the Jewish people began building homes on Palestinian land again, after ten months of construction freeze.
No other plan for negotiations was accepted by the Palestinians since then, and the way to self-proclamation of a state was open.

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