JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Sunday that Israel would take its own “unilateral steps” in response to the Palestinians’ move last week to join international conventions and reiterated that a Palestinian state could be created “only through direct negotiations, not through empty statements and not by unilateral moves.”
The Palestinians say they took the contentious step only because Israel failed to release a promised group of long-serving prisoners by the end of March, breaking its own commitment as part of the negotiations.
It was Netanyahu’s first public statement about the peace process since last week’s crisis, which left the U.S.-brokered negotiations on the brink of collapse,and came hours before the lead Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met Sunday with Martin Indyk, the Obama administration’s special envoy for the talks.
While the prime minister was clearly trying to lay blame for the possible collapse on his counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, he, like other leaders who spoke in the past several days, left open a window for salvaging the talks before their current April 29 expiration date.
Netanyahu did not specify what “unilateral steps” Israel might employ, though local news outlets have reported that the country is preparing to block a mobile-phone company from entering the Gaza Strip and providing 3G service in the West Bank, and to cancel plans for some development projects in the West Bank.
“We are ready to continue the talks, but not at any price,” Netanyahu said at the start of Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting. “The Palestinians substantially violated in a significant way the understandings that were reached with American involvement. The Palestinian threats to appeal to the U.N. will not affect us - the Palestinians have much to lose from this unilateral move.”
Israeli leaders attribute the crisis to Abbas’ signing Tuesday night of documents seeking membership in 15 international treaties and conventions, something he had promised not to do during the nine-month term of the talks Secretary of State John Kerry started last summer.
But the Palestinians say their move, which leveraged the nonmember observer-state status they won at the U.N. in 2012, came only because the prisoner release did not occur on time.
“The release of prisoners is part of an agreement, and no compromise can be accepted,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close aide to Abbas and officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said Sunday on the Voice of Palestine radio station. “This is a basic issue for us. Israel continues with its practices withdrawing all agreement, and at the same time it does not want to commit to any agreed-about standards.”
Such finger-pointing was not just between the parties to the talks. It also broke out within Israel’s Cabinet, where there are deep divisions on the Palestinian question.
Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, who has been leading the negotiations for the Israelis, accused the housing minister, Uri Ariel, of deliberately sabotaging the process by publishing tenders for 700 new apartments in Gilo, a Jewish area of east Jerusalem, on Tuesday, even as Netanyahu was preparing to convene the Cabinet to discuss a new deal to extend negotiations.Palestinians say the Gilo announcement contributed to Abbas’ decision to sign the documents joining international conventions.
“The entire Jewish Home and Uri Ariel, first and foremost, have only been waiting for an opportunity to continue to build, to make more statements, to bring the world down on our heads and prevent us from reaching an arrangement,” Livni said, referring to Ariel’s right-wing faction, in an Israeli television interview broadcast Saturday night.
“That is the price of the presence of having Uri Ariel and the Jewish Home in the government,” she added. “I didn’t want them there, and they’re permanent damage.”
Ariel called Livni “insolent” in a radio interview Sunday morning, and said the tenders were unconnected to the negotiations and meant to help ease Israel’s housing crisis.
“The joke is on Minister Livni, who received unlimited credit to make peace,” Ariel said, “and failed completely. Now she’s looking for someone to blame other than herself.”
Netanyahu, in his Cabinet remarks, echoed Livni’s statements that Israel had been about to approve a deal for extending the talks into 2015 when Abbas acted.
The deal was to include Israel’s release of the prisoners originally promised by the end of March plus 400 others and “restraint” on West Bank settlement construction, in exchange for the U.S. freeing Jonathan Pollard, the former Navy intelligence officer convicted of spying for Israel, and a continued Palestinian commitment not to pursue membership in U.N. bodies.
“During these talks we carried out difficult steps and showed a willingness to continue implementing moves that were not easy - in the coming months as well - in order to create a framework that would allow for putting an end to the conflict between us,” Netanyahu said.
“Just as we were about to enter into that framework for the continuation of the negotiations, Abu Mazen hastened to declare that he is not prepared even to discuss recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” he added, using Abbas’ nickname. “To my regret, as we reached the moment before agreeing on the continuation of the talks, the Palestinian leadership hastened to unilaterally request to accede” to international conventions.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, questioned the value of the negotiations, asking in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio if it was “a crime” to seek the establishment of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 war.
“If it’s a crime for me to ask the Israeli government to say that we want to achieve two states” based on 1967 lines, “what am I doing with you? What are you negotiating to achieve?” Erekat said.
But in another interview, Erekat expressed willingness to move forward with the talks.
“We are trying to save it. I think there is a mutual interest by all parties,” he told Israeli Channel 2 TV.
After last week’s breakdown, Kerry voiced impatience with all sides, saying the U.S. would re-evaluate its role as a mediator. The impasse is the most serious since Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed in July to resume negotiations for nine months, ending April 29. Kerry, who had aspired to achieve a final peace accord by that date, has scaled back his ambitions to keeping talks alive beyond the end of the month.
Meanwhile Sunday, Israel said its aircraft struck five “terror sites” in the Gaza Strip overnight in response to rocket fire. The military said more than 80 rockets have hit Israel since last month, including a heavy barrage in mid-March from Gaza militants. Hamas, which rules Gaza, said two militant training sites were hit.
Violence between Israel and militants in the coastal strip has increased in recent weeks, after a lull from a 2012 cease-fire.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu issued a statement condemning suspected vandals who damaged the vehicle of a senior army officer in the West Bank. The vehicle’s tires were slashed, the second such incident this year, according to the military.
Information for this article was contributed by Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times; by Tia Goldenberg of The Associated Press; and by Amy Teibel, Calev Ben-David and Alisa Odenheimer of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/07/2014