Palestinians, Israelis Set Date to Sign Accord

Israeli and Palestinian leaders took another half-step forward in their chronically delayed peace negotiations Tuesday, announcing that they have agreed on the principles for expanding Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and will sign a formal accord July 25.

Emerging from talks in the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip, both sides conceded that gaps remain on several key issues, but they vowed to work at full speed to meet their newest deadline in a peace process that is a year behind schedule.

“We are pretty close to a final agreement,” Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said. “We have undertaken July 25 as the deadline.”

Palestinian Economy Minister Ahmed Korei said the signing will probably take place in Washington.

“I will not say that the hard issues have been overcome. However, principles have been reached,” Korei said.

Negotiations on the second phase of a 1993 peace accord concern the redeployment of Israeli troops, Palestinian elections and the transfer of civilian powers from the Israeli government to the Palestinian Authority. Under the accord’s first phase, the authority has ruled Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho since May, 1994.

The release of about 5,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails--many of whom are in their 17th day of a hunger strike--also is under negotiation.

Israeli officials say their main concerns are over security--protecting about 140,000 Jews who live in West Bank settlements and ensuring that Islamic fundamentalists do not use the area as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel.

In the latest negotiations, both sides appeared to have made compromises, although Peres insisted, “We did not make any concessions on security.”

Jewish settlements are to remain under Israeli army protection, while the government reportedly is to withdraw from all major West Bank towns but Hebron by the end of the year.

The 300 or so smaller villages in the West Bank would be under Palestinian civilian authority, but the Palestinians reportedly have agreed that security for the vast majority of them will remain in Israeli hands.

Roads and open areas would remain under Israeli control, as the government wanted, but with limited joint patrols “for certain hours of the day,” as the Palestinians wished, according to a senior Israeli official.

The issue of Israeli “hot pursuit” of suspects into Palestinian territory still has not been resolved. There also is no firm timetable for the pullback from towns, although the two sides reportedly have agreed on withdrawal from the northern West Bank towns of Janin, Qalqiliya, Nablus and Tulkarm before Palestinian elections are held in the fall.

“They [the Palestinians] want a binding timetable. We gave them a ballpark figure that depends on how things work with security. Here we still have some differences,” said the Israeli official, who asked not to be identified.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Monday that a redeployment from Ramallah and Bethlehem would be carried out in stages as bypass roads are built to connect settlers to Jewish urban centers. He has refused to discuss Hebron, a flash point of Arab-Israeli conflict with about 400 settlers living among 100,000 Palestinians.

Delays in implementation of the peace accord signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in September, 1993, and the detention of Palestinian prisoners have fueled Arab anger in the West Bank and led to increasingly violent protests in recent days.

Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had set July 1 as their deadline for a Palestinian autonomy accord and negotiated for a marathon eight hours over the weekend in a failed attempt to meet that target.