‘Palestinian, Israeli teams make progress towards extending talks’

Despite the crisis in peace talks, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for a third time this week on Thursday. Israeli and Arab media reports said they discussed proposals to break through the logjam and extend negotiations though early 2015, Reuters news agency reported.

An Israeli source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed a proposal for Israel to freeze some settlement construction and free more than 400 Palestinian prisoners, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would freeze or rescind his signing of 15 world documents that angered Israel this month.

“It’s on the agenda but nothing has yet been agreed upon,” the source said, suggesting some work was still required before any deal could be finalised. Officials on both sides seemed confident the impasse in the talks could be broken.

“I would bet on the possibility of them reaching a deal to continue negotiations between now and the end of the month. The differences are not so substantial,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian government minister and now academic at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Settlements have been a constant source of aggravation between Israelis and Palestinians, with construction of new Jewish housing units in the West Bank rising 123 per cent year-on-year in 2013, a surge that coincided with the resumption of talks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that the announcement last week of tenders for 700 new housing units in East Jerusalem was the immediate cause of the negotiations crisis.

An official in Netanyahu’s office said Israel was “deeply disappointed” by Kerry’s remarks, signalling clear tensions in relations between the two allies.

Arab League 

The head of the Arab League said Thursday he is confident that Israel and the Palestinians will soon resolve a crisis over the release of long-held Palestinian prisoners and extend their US-brokered peace talks beyond an April deadline.

Nabil El Araby told The Associated Press that the April 29 deadline would be extended “for months” and rejected the idea that the talks have failed to make progress.

“I believe that negotiations are going to be resumed for several months and we hope that this will be the end of it,” he said at the Nile-side Cairo headquarters of the Arab League.

Araby did not elaborate, but he did say that he “had contact” with Kerry, who is leading the talks.

Abbas also is in Egypt, where he met with Egyptian leaders and held talks with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Araby also met with Ashton, according to AP.

‘Annex settlements’

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli minister has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex a swathe of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying peace talks with the Palestinians were dead, according to Reuters.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who is head of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home Party, wrote to the prime minister late on Wednesday saying Israel should extend its sovereign territory to a number of major settlement blocs.

Mega settlements, such as Ma’ale Adumin, are built on land seized in the 1967 war — territory the Palestinians want for their future state. Successive governments have said the blocs, deemed illegal under international law, should remain part of Israel in any negotiated deal with the Palestinians.

“It is clear that the current process has exhausted itself and that we are entering a new era,” said Bennett, urging Netanyahu to annex a number of large settlements.

“These are areas which enjoy a wide national consensus, have security implications and have historical significance for the state of Israel.”

Netanyahu made no comment on Bennett’s request, but is likely to face strident calls from within his own rightist Likud Party to annex the blocs, home to an estimated 350,000 Israelis, if the latest peace talks implode.

Such a move would almost certainly set off a storm of international condemnation, and Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said Bennett was acting like a “provocative child” who needed parental restraint.

“If you want to go totally crazy, keep it up until we can no longer make a deal and lose everything we hold dear,” Livni, who serves as justice minister, wrote on her Facebook page.