Palestinians Fault U.S. Ideas; Barak Pulls Out of Talks

A summit planned for tonight between caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in Egypt was canceled this morning after the Palestinians harshly criticized U.S. peace proposals, but Barak’s office said the leaders may still get together soon.

A spokesman for Barak said the prime minister will consult with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after Mubarak meets in Cairo today with Arafat. Depending on the outcome of the Mubarak-Arafat meeting, the spokesman said, Barak may join the leaders in Cairo “but not today, for sure.”

Egyptian officials in Cairo announced early this morning that the summit had been canceled because Barak wouldn’t attend.

The Israeli move came after some Palestinian officials said the Palestinian leadership was rejecting President Clinton’s proposals for a framework final peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. One senior Israeli source said that both sides were engaging in brinkmanship. The Israelis, the source said, hoped a summit might still be called in the next few days.

Barak, who is trailing badly in public opinion polls in the run-up to Feb. 6 elections, needs a peace agreement with the Palestinians to better his chances of defeating Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon in the race.

The first face-to-face meeting between Barak and Arafat since October was meant to pave the way for the two of them to travel to Washington to conclude an accord before Clinton leaves office Jan. 20.

But the planned summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik began to unravel Wednesday when Palestinian officials expressed grave concerns about the U.S. ideas. Clinton has proposed that Israel relinquish sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in exchange for the Palestinians’ giving up their goal of securing the right for refugees to return to homes lost when Israel was created.

“The issues are extremely difficult,” Clinton told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, before the Egyptian Information Ministry announced that the summit had been canceled. “But they are closer than they have ever been before, and I hope and pray they will seize this opportunity.”

A few hours after Clinton spoke, officials leaving a late-night meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee said the leadership was rejecting the ideas in the U.S. proposals.

Clinton’s proposals, unveiled Saturday, have brought both sides to a moment of truth and created an atmosphere of enormous tension and expectation. Israel found Clinton’s proposals painful to accept, and some senior Palestinian officials denounced them as trickery.

Among Palestinians, debate is raging about whether Arafat should push to conclude a deal while Clinton is in the White House and Barak in power or wait until George W. Bush succeeds Clinton and see whether Barak is defeated in upcoming elections by Likud leader Ariel Sharon. Recent polls show Barak trailing the hawkish Sharon, who has vowed to disregard any agreement Barak may reach.

“It should not be our priority or goal to save Barak,” Hani Masri, an official with the Palestinian Authority’s Information Ministry, wrote in the Arabic newspaper Al Ayyam, considered a mouthpiece for the authority.

On the contrary, Masri said, if Sharon beats Barak and cracks down on Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, “Israel will quickly become isolated internationally and divided internally. This will make his government more willing to make concessions than Barak or any other leader of the left or peace camp.”

Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed-Rabbo sharply criticized Clinton’s proposals. “The offer we have is not an opportunity but a trap,” he told reporters in Gaza. “It’s very far from the principle of the peace process and the principle of negotiations.”

Both Palestinians and Israel Miss Deadline

Both Israel and the Palestinians let pass a Wednesday deadline by the Clinton administration for responding to the proposals. The Palestinians sought clarifications of some points in a letter to Clinton and rejected others outright, but they didn’t approve or reject using the proposals as a basis for further talks.

Arafat met with the PLO’s Executive Committee in Gaza on Wednesday night to decide on a final response to the proposals. Afterward, an unnamed Palestinian official told the Associated Press, “This decision by the PLO Executive means a rejection of the ideas in the American proposal which did not comply with the Palestinian requirement in any agreement.”

Arafat issued no statement.

The Israeli government discussed the proposals for five hours Wednesday morning, scheduled a second session late Wednesday night and early today announced that it was accepting Clinton’s proposals with reservations.

“My main mission is to keep to a minimum the number of military cemeteries,” Barak told Cabinet ministers, according to Israel Radio.

Most members of Barak’s Cabinet said they approved Clinton’s proposals with heavy hearts, but at least two said they would never agree to divide sovereignty in Jerusalem. Clinton has proposed Palestinian sovereignty over Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and over much of the walled Old City. His proposal would leave sovereignty over the Western Wall in Israel’s hands.

Alarmed by reports that Barak is willing to cede 95% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state and evacuate 50 to 60 Jewish settlements, settlers vowed to build bunkers and fight to the death rather than be pried from their homes.

Some right-wing Israeli leaders denounced Barak as a traitor, a term that was applied to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after he signed the Oslo peace accords in 1993 and before he was assassinated by a right-wing Orthodox Jew.

Rehavam Zeevi, a far-right member of the Knesset, as Israel’s parliament is known, pronounced Barak “insane.”

“I am saying this with great care because this is a terrible expression, but I am protecting him by saying he has gone mad,” Zeevi said at a right-wing gathering Tuesday to organize opposition to the peace efforts. “Because if he has not lost his mind, he has committed treason. The punishment for a traitor according to Israeli law is death.”

Mayor’s Plan May Spark More Bloodshed

Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said he will move his office to a corner of the Western Wall plaza in the Old City today for a week, a move that Palestinians warned may spark more bloody protests.

The wall is the last remnant of the Second Temple and abuts the Temple Mount compound, the site sacred to Muslims as the Haram al Sharif, or “noble sanctuary.” Palestinians blame Sharon’s visit there Sept. 28 for triggering the violence that has engulfed the region since.

Olmert joined hundreds of Jewish demonstrators at Lion’s Gate in the Old City for the lighting of Hanukkah candles Wednesday night but urged them not to label Barak a traitor. Sharon, who has denounced Barak for “conducting a clearance sale of all the national security and strategic interests of the state of Israel,” made a similar plea. Barak, Sharon said, is not a traitor, and “militant words should not be used” about the prime minister.

Daniel Cruise, a White House spokesman on foreign policy, acknowledged receipt of a letter from the Palestinians raising pointed questions about the president’s proposals. But he said the administration didn’t consider the communication to be the final word.

“The letter does not respond to the issues raised by the president,” Cruise said. “It raises questions, but it does not respond to the ideas the president put forward. We are still waiting to hear a response.”

Cruise said that Clinton solicited support for his plan from Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, Jordanian King Abdullah II and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in phone conversations.

In a front-page story Wednesday, Al Ayyam listed elements of Clinton’s proposals that it said the Palestinian Authority objected to. Chief among them was his proposal that Palestinians would have sovereignty over the mosques and surface of the Temple Mount but that Israel would have rights to earth beneath it, where the remains of the First and Second Temples are believed to lie.

The Palestinians also object to giving Israel a corridor running almost from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, and to granting a 20-year lease for land in the West Bank city of Hebron, where militant Jewish settlers now live.

The newspaper quoted “informed Palestinian sources” as saying there was nothing different from positions presented at July’s Camp David summit, which collapsed over disputes about sovereignty in Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Two months later, the Palestinian revolt erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The violence derailed peace negotiations and has claimed the lives of more than 350 people, most of them Palestinians.

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Curtius reported from Jerusalem and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.