This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
Israel Calls Off Prisoner Release as Kerry Seeks to Keep Talks Alive
Israel Cancels Prisoner Release as Talks Hit Impasse
(about 3 hours later)
ALGIERS — Israel has called off plans to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners, people involved in the threatened peace talks said Thursday, an indication of the severity of the impasse between the two sides despite the pressure from Secretary of State John Kerry to keep the negotiations alive.
ALGIERS — Israel said on Thursday that it would not go through with an already delayed release of Palestinian prisoners and was considering further sanctions against the Palestinians as the threat to the peace talks deepened further despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s concerted efforts to keep the process alive.
The decision was described by the Israeli side as a response to the announcement on Tuesday by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that his administration was formally seeking to join 15 international bodies, which the Israelis regarded as an unacceptable move that would subvert the direct negotiations with Israel for Palestinian statehood. Mr. Abbas said he took the step as a response to to what he called Israel’s violation of an earlier pledge to release the prisoners as part of the negotiations process, which began last summer.
The talks have spiraled into an impasse as each side accuses the other of bad faith and places impediments in the way of a resolution.
According to people involved in the negotiations, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli government’s chief negotiator, informed her Palestinian counterparts of the decision to cancel the release of a last batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of murder, during a meeting that lasted into the early morning hours of Thursday.
The Israeli decision came after the Palestinian leadership formally applied for membership in 15 international conventions and treaties, a move Jerusalem deemed an unacceptable violation of the American-brokered terms for the talks that began in July. But the Palestinians say they took that step only after the Israelis failed to meet the deadline for releasing the prisoners.
The news, while not unexpected, was another blow to the entreaties by Mr. Kerry, who had canceled a trip on Wednesday to the West Bank to meet with Mr. Abbas after the formal submission of applications to join 15 international conventions and treaties.
Worried that the process was in danger of collapsing, Mr. Kerry publicly appealed to the leaders to “lead” and not let the atmosphere deteriorate further.
Mr. Kerry, visiting Algiers on Thursday for a long-planned meeting on security issues, made his first public comment about the faltering Mideast peace negotiations since he canceled the meeting with Mr. Abbas, warning both the Israeli and Palestinian sides that they must “lead” if they wanted to preserve the chances for a historic agreement.
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had pledged not to seek membership in international bodies for the nine months allotted for the negotiations, in return for the release by Israel in four groups of 104 long-serving Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of murder.
Mr. Kerry signaled that he was prepared to continue his efforts to encourage the two sides to reach a deal. “The parties met even last night,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to the meeting between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, which included American officials, in Jerusalem. “We will continue to, no matter what, to try to facilitate the capacity of people to be able to make peace.”
But Israel sought to condition the release of the final batch on an extension of the negotiations beyond the current deadline of April 29. And though the Palestinians blamed Israel for delaying the fourth release beyond a late-March deadline and precipitating the current crisis, Israel is now accusing the Palestinians of having foreclosed the planned release with their move.
But Mr. Kerry emphasized that it was Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who shouldered the ultimate responsibility for salvaging the talks. “In the end, my friends, as all of you know, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions and compromises, the leaders have to lead, and they have to be able to see a moment when it is there,” Mr. Kerry said.
People involved in the negotiations said Tzipi Livni, the Israeli government’s chief negotiator, told her Palestinian counterparts during an intense overnight meeting convened by Martin Indyk, Mr. Kerry’s envoy, that the Palestinians had acted even though they knew the Israeli government was making a genuine, coordinated effort to arrange the prisoners’ release.
“There is an old saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” he added. “Now is the time to drink, and the leaders need to know that.”
Ms. Livni called on the Palestinians to withdraw their applications and return to the negotiating table, according to people with knowledge of the three-way meeting, arguing that unilateral steps would not advance the negotiations or the Palestinians’ cause. (None of those briefed on, or involved in, the meetings would speak publicly because Mr. Kerry had asked them to preserve the secrecy of the discussions.)
At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said he had been touch with the American team at the three-way talks in Jerusalem, which lasted until 4 a.m. on Thursday.
But the Palestinians seemed to think they had the upper hand.
He said progress had been made toward narrowing “some of the questions that have arisen as a result of the events of the last few days,” an allusion to the refusal by the Israelis to fulfill their promise to release the fourth group of prisoners and the Palestinians’ applications to join the international conventions.
“For the first time the Palestinians have something to use against Israel if it does not abide by agreements, and we made use of it,” a Palestinian official close to the negotiations said Thursday. “We will not withdraw the applications. They stand.”
“But there is still a gap, and that gap will have to be closed, and closed fairly soon,” Mr. Kerry said. “I think it is a critical moment, obviously.”
Maan, an independent Palestinian news agency, published what it said were new, stringent conditions set by Palestinian negotiators for any extension of the talks beyond April 29.
He said he expected to be in touch with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas later on Thursday.
They include a written commitment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that he recognizes the 1967 lines as the basis for the borders of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the release of an additional 1,200 prisoners — terms the Israelis would almost certainly reject.
Mr. Kerry appeared to preview some of the points he planned to make: that the pursuit of a peace accord that could put an end to decades of conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis should not be thwarted by a dispute over steps that are needed to stay at the negotiating table.
The details of the Maan report could not immediately be confirmed.
“The fight right now, the disagreement between them, is not over the fundamental substance of a final status agreement,” he said. “It is over the process that would get you there and what you need to do in order to be able to continue to negotiate.”
But Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, told Agence France-Presse, “Israel has a habit of evading agreements and conventions it has signed.” He added: “That is why conditions for future negotiations must change radically.”
Mr. Kerry said it would be a “tragedy” if the two sides were unable to discuss the issues at the core of the conflict because of a dispute over conditions to extend the talks. “A fight over process — how to get into a negotiation — should not stop you from getting into that negotiation,” he added.
An Israeli official said Jerusalem was considering further practical steps against the Palestinians. In the past, Israel has applied sanctions like withholding the transfer of tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
The Maan News Agency quoted unidentified Palestinian officials on Thursday who described the nine-hour meeting in Jerusalem as a “fierce political battle” in which Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, announced that he represented “the U.N.-recognized State of Palestine,” not the Palestinian Authority, “whose inputs and outputs are controlled by Israel.”
Rami G. Khouri, a Palestinian journalist and the director of a public-policy institute at the American University of Beirut, said that after months in which an American mandate for secrecy around the talks had largely held, the fight leapt into the public sphere.
Israeli negotiators responded with threats of “endless” sanctions on Palestinians, Maan reported, and Mr. Erekat made threats of his own about prosecuting Israelis as “war criminals” in international institutions, while Martin Indyk, the American envoy, struggled to control the “heated exchanges.”
“You have some posturing going on, which is just another form of negotiating — they’re negotiating in public now rather than in private,” Mr. Khouri said. “Each side is trying to curry favor with public opinion so if things collapse, they can blame the other side.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s office maintained an official silence through Wednesday, suggesting that Israel had no interest in inflaming the situation. But experts said there was likely to be some practical Israeli reaction, possibly including announcements of more settlement construction or the withholding of tax revenue that the Israelis collect on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
He added: “Maybe they’ll both get scared about the consequences of the collapse of the talks and come back. I suppose it’s a day at a time.”
Ms. Livni, the Israeli government’s negotiator, wrote on her Facebook page on Wednesday night that the latest Palestinian moves were “not encouraging” but that she was determined to keep the “difficult and complex” negotiations going.
Mr. Kerry, who began the day in Algiers and then flew to Rabat, Morocco, was not informed by Israeli officials that the prisoner release had been canceled but remained engaged in intense efforts to rescue the talks.
Palestinian officials and analysts described Mr. Abbas’s push to join the international bodies as a calculated move meant to salvage credibility in the eyes of his jaded public, and not to derail the peace process. In a statement, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s negotiations department said, “The P.L.O. remains committed to this nine-month process, which ends on April 29.”
“We will continue to, no matter what, to try to facilitate the capacity of people to be able to make peace,” he said in Algiers.
That gives American mediators almost another month to try to seal an extension of talks that have so far yielded little progress, but have the stated goal of the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
But he emphasized that it was Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas who held ultimate responsibility.
For the Palestinians, the breakdown of the talks was precipitated by what they said was an Israeli violation of the commitment to release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners by March 29. But Israel delayed the release while it sought a broader, American-brokered deal to extend the negotiations to early 2015.
“In the end, my friends, as all of you know, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions and compromises, the leaders have to lead, and they have to be able to see a moment when it is there,” Mr. Kerry said.
Palestinian officials were further enraged on Tuesday, when the Israeli government reissued bids for the construction of more than 700 housing units in Gilo, an area of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and that the Palestinians claim as part of a future state. The construction tenders were issued late last year and again in January, but they failed to attract any bids from developers.
He said it would be a “tragedy” if the two sides never grappled with the issues at the core of the conflict because of a dispute over conditions to extend the talks.
On Tuesday evening a gathering of about 50 members of the Palestinian leadership voted unanimously to take immediate steps to join the 15 conventions and treaties, including the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
“A fight over process — how to get into a negotiation — should not stop you from getting into that negotiation,” he said.
Before the latest Palestinian move, Israeli officials had spoken of an emerging deal involving the imminent release by the United States of an American jailed for spying for Israel in the 1980s; the release of the fourth batch of prisoners and an additional 400 Palestinian prisoners who had not committed murder; and a slowdown in settlement activity in the West Bank — though not applying to areas of Jerusalem like Gilo.
As Mr. Kerry was making the rounds in Algiers, he stopped by the American Embassy, where he made one of his two calls on Thursday to Mr. Netanyahu. Afterward, Mr. Kerry spoke to the embassy’s personnel and dependents, who had been waiting a considerable time to greet him.
Muhammad Shtayyeh, a senior aide to Mr. Abbas and a former member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said the stalling by Israel over the prisoner release had been “humiliating,” adding, “This is a matter of dignity for the Palestinian people.”
“I am really sorry that we got delayed,” he told the group. “I had a phone call, and it was one of those calls where you can’t get the other person to realize the call is over.”
Mr. Abbas has been under increasing internal pressure of late, even from within his own Fatah party, and has been criticized for engaging in an open feud with a onetime ally whom Mr. Abbas now sees as a rival, Muhammad Dahlan, a former Gaza strongman and Fatah security chief. With Gaza under the control of Hamas, the Islamic militant group, and Palestinian elections long overdue, many Palestinians also question Mr. Abbas’s legitimacy as a leader and decision-maker.
After his plane landed in Morocco, Mr. Kerry spoke with Mr. Abbas from the aircraft.
“He has a lot of holes in his sack,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Kamel Husseini, a Palestinian public relations consultant, said that the release of prisoners was the only thing that the peace process had delivered so far, and that after the delay, “Palestinian public opinion would not tolerate business as usual.” Mr. Abbas’s application to join the international conventions, he said, was “bold but not reckless.”
Israeli experts and analysts agreed that the Palestinian move was calibrated to avoid a definitive breakdown of the peace process.
Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli government minister and negotiator, described the latest events as “a side story.”
“The Palestinians themselves are not foolish enough to believe that this is really a significant political step,” Mr. Beilin said. “It is also not a punishment for Israel. What are we going to pay for it or suffer for it? It is a very artificial game here. They will not gain and we will not lose.”
With the gaps still wide, there is deep skepticism on both sides that the talks will result in a solution to the conflict, even with an extension.
“In the end of the day some formula will be adopted and the process will continue, although it has no chance to succeed,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser now at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. Neither side wants to be blamed for destroying a process that is “so dear and so important for John Kerry,” he said.
Mr. Qaq, of Al-Quds University, said that if the prisoner issue could be unlocked, “we will be back to normalcy, meaning the usual stalemate.”
