Deadline Likely to Pass on Drafting Plan for Palestinian-Israeli Peace

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat are both headed for Washington this week amid clear signs that their self-imposed deadline for drafting a preliminary permanent peace treaty will not be met.

The two sides say they remain very far apart on the core issues dividing them. Perhaps more significant is the fact that Barak, who set the ambitious Feb. 13 deadline in the first place, is now focused on peace talks with Syria, Israel’s most fervent Arab enemy.

Israel’s chief negotiator in talks with the Palestinians, Oded Eran, said Sunday that it is highly unlikely a document can be drafted by the February date. At Barak’s urging during the September signing of their last accord, Israel and the Palestinians set the target date for a “framework” agreement that would paint the broad outlines of a final, comprehensive peace to end a century of conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land.

“The truth is, it would have been very hard to meet the deadline even without the negotiations with Syria,” Eran said.

The matters yet to be resolved are the most contentious: the fate of 3 million Palestinian refugees, the conflicting claims to Jerusalem, final borders, Jewish settlements, statehood for the Palestinians and water rights. Under Barak’s schedule, the February framework document would evolve into a final agreement by September.

Last month, however, Syria entered the picture when its president, Hafez Assad, indicated that he was willing to renew negotiations with Israel that had collapsed nearly four years earlier. The next round of the resulting talks is scheduled to begin Wednesday.

In contrast to previous Israeli leaders, Barak has insisted that he can manage a “two-track” peace process, engaging Assad and Arafat simultaneously. The political difficulty for him lies in having to present two peace packages, at the same time, to a skeptical public being asked to make painful territorial sacrifices. Already, opposition to a deal with Syria appears to be growing.

As the Syria talks advanced, many Palestinians said they feared they would be relegated to a second tier. Barak may have fanned those fears by confirming that he had decided to delay the withdrawal of Israeli forces from 6% more of the West Bank. The hand-over to Palestinian control was originally scheduled for Thursday, when Arafat is to meet with President Clinton in Washington.

“A joint [U.S.-Israeli] decision was made to push hard on the Syrian track,” Eran said. “It makes it hard for the U.S., and to some extent for Barak, to concentrate on the Palestinians.”

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinians, reacted angrily Sunday both to news of the delayed hand-over and to Eran’s comments on the fast-fading February deadline. Erekat noted that it was Barak, not the Palestinians, who insisted on setting a date and that letting it slip will call into question Israel’s commitment to meeting other deadlines.

“I think it’s a big mistake if they favor one track over the other,” Erekat said.

Arafat’s Cabinet, however, issued a statement over the weekend concurring that meeting the Feb. 13 deadline seems impossible.

While little substantial progress is being reported in the Palestinian-Israeli talks, the negotiations do continue, and the atmosphere behind the scenes is said to be more positive than public appearances would indicate.

In Washington, Barak and Arafat are likely to meet together with Clinton, possibly on Thursday. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Sunday that the two Middle Eastern leaders will present Clinton with draft framework agreements. But these may be limited to identifying the areas of difference--already well known--instead of resolving them.

“Nothing can be written down on paper, given the size and breadth of differences between the two sides over the final-status issues,” Ahmed Korei, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, said over the weekend. “But we are still trying, and we will never give up hope.”