Israel, Palestinians Start Final Round of Talks

JERUSALEM — Israel and the Palestinian Authority opened negotiations Sunday over the last--and most difficult--issues standing in the way of a definitive end to their decades-old conflict.

The meeting in the Egyptian resort city of Taba, which began with a handshake between chief Israeli negotiator Uri Savir and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, was more symbolic than substantive. The two sides were anxious to show skeptical Palestinians that the peace process will move forward, but both were aware that they cannot get down to real business before Israel’s May 29 national elections.

The Israeli vote will determine whether Prime Minister Shimon Peres remains in office to complete the historic negotiations that he and his slain predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, began three years ago, or whether the Palestinians will face right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu across the bargaining table.

Savir and Abbas opened the session by warning violent extremists on both sides that they cannot prevent peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“We are determined to put an end to decades of confrontation,” Abbas said. To the extremists, he added, “You belong to the past. . . . You will lose, for we are determined to win.”

Just how difficult it will be to reach an agreement, however, was evident in the three-hour delay of the session after Israel insisted that changes be made to the Palestinians’ opening statement.

The language was changed, but Abbas, known as Abu Maazen, still managed to lay down most of the Palestinians’ negotiating position.

“The Palestinian people’s national aspirations are no secret,” Abbas said.

“We aspire to live in peace within the framework of a Palestinian independent state with recognized and secure boundaries--the June 4, 1967, boundaries--with East Jerusalem as its capital,” he said. The date refers to the day before the beginning of the Middle East War, in which Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Savir responded with Israel’s equally familiar position that it plans to hang on to the predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, which it annexed after the war.

“For us, there is one issue that is eternal: Israel’s united capital, Jerusalem,” Savir said in his opening speech.

Under a September 1995 accord, the two sides have three years to tackle fundamental questions about control over Jerusalem and Old City holy sites; the future of Israeli settlements in the West Bank; the fate of Palestinian refugees; and the borders and status of the Palestinian territory--whether or not the Palestinians get a sovereign state.

*

Savir told reporters that the opening session by the Red Sea was meant to “prove to both peoples that we are determined to go ahead until we come to [the] final status and full reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.”

But the message was directed primarily at the Palestinians, who are angry about Israel’s failure to redeploy its troops from the West Bank city of Hebron on March 28, as called for in the 1995 agreement, and about the ongoing Israeli closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Peres sealed the territories’ borders with Israel and delayed the troop redeployment from Hebron after a wave of Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombings began on Feb. 25, taking more than 60 lives in nine days. The closure is likely to stay in place at least until the elections. And now the decision to go forward with the Hebron redeployment is also tangled in the web of Israeli politics.

While promising to honor his commitment to redeploy troops from Hebron, Peres has yet to set a date. Several high-ranking officials have said they believe the redeployment will occur after the elections, for security rather than political reasons; they fear violence on election day from Islamic extremists or radical Jews who live in Hebron.

Leftist and Israeli Arab members of Peres’ coalition government are furious about the postponement, while the right-wing opposition has encouraged Peres to wait. Netanyahu has said that if he wins the vote, he will expand Jewish settlements in Hebron and the rest of the West Bank.

Israeli troops have withdrawn from six other West Bank cities under the interim peace accord. Hebron is the most difficult case because the city’s 450 mostly militant Jews live surrounded by about 120,000 Palestinians. Israeli soldiers are to remain posted around the Jewish enclaves and the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, but to leave the rest of the city.

On Sunday, Peres agreed to a demand from members of his government to convene his security advisors within a week to decide on a date for the Hebron withdrawal.

Israel also has not complied with its commitment to create so-called safe passages linking the autonomous Palestinian areas, and some Palestinian prisoners who were to have been released by now remain in Israeli jails.

Meeting an Israeli condition for starting final talks, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization last month abolished its 32-year-old call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“After the Palestinians recognized Israel, it is now Israel’s turn to lift its opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state in recognized borders,” Palestinian negotiator Abbas said at the meeting in Taba.

Abbas reportedly had also intended to state another demand: the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled from or fled Israel after the Jewish state was established in 1948--an estimated 3 million refugees, including children and grandchildren. But Israel would not hear of it.

Peres’ Labor Party last month dropped its long-standing opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, even though government negotiators would prefer to see the Palestinians end up in a confederation with neighboring Jordan.

Israeli negotiators say the country will not go back to its 1967 borders and will not discuss the return of 1948 refugees or any redivision of Jerusalem. The government wants the Old City religious sites--which are holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews--under some kind of neutral administration but under Israeli sovereignty.

Yossi Beilin, a government minister and Peres’ right-hand man, said he wants the Palestinians to ultimately recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He said the Palestinians would have “less than a state” because they would be without an army.

*

The Palestinians are calling for the removal of Jewish settlements from the West Bank, although recently they have said that some could remain under Palestinian rule.

The Labor government’s position is that settlers should be given the option of either resettling within Israel or remaining under the Palestinians. There are 140,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Describing the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating positions, Beilin told Israeli television, “I believe we, as the side that has everything, have the advantage. We are here. We are in control of the territory and of Jerusalem.”

The two sides met for about 1 1/2 hours before recessing early this morning. They are to adjourn later today until after the Israeli elections.