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PublishedApril 03rd 2014

            

Israel scraps prisoner release as Palestinians issue list of demands

Palestinian list of demands includes East Jerusalem as capital and the release of 1,200 prisoners

Israel's Minister of Justice and Chief Negotiator Tzipi Livni on Thursday announced that Israel is calling off the planned release of 26 Palestinian inmates. The move apparently comes in response to the Palestinians' unilateral move of applying to join 15 UN and international bodies to seek recognition for their promised state.

"The situation has changed, and now Israeli cannot release the fourth batch of prisoners," Livni said. The Israeli official has reportedly relayed the message to her her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat during an emergency meeting on Wednesday.

Earlier Thursday, the Palestinians have issued a set of seven core demands for their continued participation in the peace talks, including the release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and lifting the blockade on Gaza.

The move apparently represents a further hardening of the Palestinian position, as the US-brokered negotiation appears to be in deep crisis.

The demands, according to the Ynet website, are as follows:

1. A written obligation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept that the borders of the future Palestinian state be based on the '1967 lines', with East Jerusalem as its capital.

2. The release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa'adat.

3. Lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip and executing the "border pass agreement."

4. Agreeing to the return of the 13 "Church of Nativity deportees" to the West Bank.

5. Halting all construction in East Jerusalem and a re-opening Palestinian institutions that were closed by Israel (such as the Orient House).

6. Israeli army to no longer enjoy free entry to Area A of the West Bank to arrest or terminate wanted persons, and the Palestinian authority will be granted control of Area C, which is currently under full Israeli control.

7. Some 15,000 Palestinians to be granted Israeli citizenship, as part of a family reunification program.

Such demands are likely to be met with an outright rejected by the Israeli government.

Kerry: talks at 'critical moment'

US Secretary of State John Kerry, saying Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had reached a "critical moment," threw down a challenge to the leaders of both sides, saying Thursday that they had to choose whether or not to make peace.

"You can facilitate, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions to compromise," Kerry said in Algiers at the start of a trip to North Africa.

"The leaders have to lead, and they have to be able to see a moment when it's there," he added, showing signs of frustration after his months-long peace efforts appeared to be in tatters.

"There's an old saying, 'You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink,'" Kerry said at the Algerian foreign ministry.

"Now's the time to drink; the leaders need to know that."

Negotiating teams in Jerusalem made progress in overnight talks that stretched until 4:00 am (0100 GMT), but "there is still a gap and that gap needs to close fairly soon," Kerry told reporters in Algeria.

He added that the United States remained committed to the talks, and said that after the trilateral meeting on Wednesday discussions would continue.

Israel and the United States made clear on Wednesday that they expect the Palestinian Authority to withdraw its applications to join 15 organizations in order to obtain international recognition.

“There are no short cuts to statehood,” the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Powers told a congressional committee. “We have made that clear.”

But the United States also made clear it would not play "the blame game," casting equal responsibility on both Israelis and Palestinians to fix the crisis in their talks.

Nonetheless, unofficially the Americans cast at least some of the blame for this week's blowup on Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, claiming that he deliberately tried to sabotage the peace talks by announcing a tender for the construction of some 700 apartments in East Jerusalem – an area claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.

Ariel's office denied that the timing of the tender publication was deliberate, saying the two previous publications had not yielded bids and the tender was re-issued automatically without Ariel's knowledge.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, meanwhile, said he did not know “if this is a real crisis or an imagined one” but that the ball is in the Palestinians’ court. "If the Palestinians don't want negotiations, we shouldn't run after them," he said.

Elkin: 'time to stop being suckers'

His deputy, MK Ze'ev Elkin, used stronger language. “The time has come to stop being the go-to sucker of the Middle East,” he said. “I call on the prime minister to end the entire negotiation process so long as Abbas doesn’t withdraw his request from the United Nations."

Elkin also spoke out harshly against Justice Minister and chief Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni, saying her meeting on Wednesday with her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat was “a disgrace to the state of Israel.”

Livni herself, reflecting the disagreement within Netanyahu's coalition government, agreed the Palestinian move was detrimental but added that she believed talks would continue despite the crisis. “I am looking out for Israel's interests," she said at a Tel Aviv gathering. "We repeat and pledge that we will continue to fight for peace and stand like a fortified wall against the extremists, in the government as well."

Livni termed Abbas’s applications to join the 15 treaties and conventions, “a breach of [his] commitment” not to apply to UN bodies while the negotiations were continuing. “It harms Palestinian interests,” she said of the move. “If they want a state, they must understand it must pass through the negotiating room.”

The current setback in the talks was sparked by Israel's refusal to free a remaining group of 26 Palestinian prisoners in keeping with a commitment to free 104 inmates in four batches by March 29.

In a last-minute effort to prevent a collapse of the talks, Kerry proposed a trilateral deal according to which Israel would free the Palestinian terror convicts and an additional 400 Palestinians convicted of lesser offenses, the Palestinians would agree to extend the peace talks into 2015, beyond the current April 29 deadline, and the US would release American-Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard serving a life sentence.

Palestinians: we're defending ourselves

The Palestinians, for their part, sought to explain on Wednesday that their move was not tantamount to seeking statehood without negotiations.

The applications did not include a request for recognition as a member state of the International Criminal Court, but it did include one for the Fourth Geneva Convention, which the Palestinians' UN representative Riyad Mansour said was the most important application and which was effective immediately.

“Our state is under occupation. This is a significant instrument in providing protection for our civilian population,” said Mansour.

The convention “gives us additional power and strength in defending our nation and the land of our state and ensuring respect for our civilian population,” said Mansour.

“Israel is not honoring and respecting its obligation under international law,” he said, and characterized the treaties, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, as “enforcement mechanisms.”