Clinton Urges Arafat to Defer Statehood Claim

In a bid to dissuade the Palestinians from declaring statehood one week from today, the Clinton administration on Monday urged a one-year extension of the Oslo peace process and promised to push harder for a final settlement with Israel.

The American offer, contained in a letter from President Clinton to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, came as leaders the world over pressured Arafat not to declare an independent state on May 4, the final date of a five-year peace effort launched by the landmark Oslo accords.

Israel has threatened to annex Palestinian land if Arafat does not back down. The U.S., Russia and most of Europe are urging the Palestinians not to act unilaterally but to negotiate their statehood.

Negotiations, however, have been stalemated for months, in part because of Israel’s contentious election season. National elections are scheduled for May 17.

Despite deep dissent within his own political following, Arafat is widely believed to be ready to postpone the claim of statehood. The question is how he can do that and save face with an increasingly impatient and disillusioned Palestinian population.

Clinton’s letter appears to be a small reward for the expected postponement, although it falls far short of what Palestinian negotiators sought, diplomats said.

It reiterates U.S. support of the Palestinians’ right to live freely on their land, a position Clinton stated during his historic visit to Gaza City in December. It does not pledge to recognize an independent state, however, nor does it fix the one-year extension as leading to a firm deadline, as the Palestinians had wanted.

It does contain a strong condemnation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, branding them “destructive” to the peace, according to officials familiar with the letter’s content. With encouragement from the Israeli government, Jewish settlers have staked out more than a dozen new outposts in the last six months in a campaign to prevent the land from being ceded to Palestinian control. That action has angered the Palestinians.

Clinton also offered to chair a three-way summit in six months to assess the progress of intensified talks.

The language of the letter was worked out last week in Washington by the U.S. special envoy for the Middle East, Dennis B. Ross, and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Arafat will relay its contents to a crucial meeting today of the Palestinian Central Council, the No. 2 decision-making body within the Palestine Liberation Organization. The 124-member council will debate and formally decide on whether to postpone the declaration of statehood. A conclusion may not come for days or weeks.

Even before that debate, however, Palestinian legislators did not conceal their disappointment. In a resolution approved Monday, the Palestinian Legislative Council expressed “great regret” at what it termed U.S. failure to stop “Israeli aggression [and] collective punishment of our people.”

The legislative council, the Palestinians’ only elected body and one that Arafat largely ignores, also hedged a bit on the timing of the statehood declaration. In the ambiguously worded resolution, members reasserted the Palestinians’ “legitimate aspiration” to a nation with Jerusalem as the capital, but they also urged that “necessary steps” be taken to achieve that goal--hardly a revolutionary cry.

If the independence declaration is put off, it will be a huge relief to nervous American and European officials who fear a violent chain of events. The original deadline falls 13 days before Israel’s election, and commentators here argue that unilateral actions by Arafat would play into the hands of hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is running for reelection on a platform that pledges to keep the Palestinians in line.

On Monday, Netanyahu was taking credit for Arafat’s likely change of heart.

Speaking on two Israeli radio programs, Netanyahu said he had warned Arafat that making a unilateral declaration would void the Oslo agreement and release Israel from its obligations.

“I said that Israel would react very firmly, and as a result of my announcement and these months of long insistence, the Palestinian Authority actually understood that it had to back down,” he said.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s government on Monday pressed ahead with a crackdown on the Palestinian Authority presence in East Jerusalem by ordering that several offices there be closed. The government maintains that the offices at Orient House, a Palestinian political-diplomatic headquarters in East Jerusalem, are being used for activities that challenge Israeli sovereignty over the disputed city.

Critics of the Netanyahu government saw the move against Orient House as both an election tactic and a slap at the Palestinian hankering for independence.