Israel has once again hampered efforts to resume the long-stalled direct peace negotiations by refusing to meet the conditions set by Palestinians.
While Palestinians consider the conditions as terms of references for direct talks to start, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom on Wednesday accused Abbas of setting “impossible conditions”.
The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly said that it will only join direct talks with Israel after Tel Aviv ends the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and accepts a full Israeli withdrawal to the borders of 1967.
The Palestinian authority has also called for the resumption of the negotiations from the point they were left off at the end of 2008.
Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday that direct talks would resume after agreements are made on key issues in the ongoing indirect “proximity talks,” which the Fatah-led West Bank authority entered under US pressure, despite opposition from other West Bank factions and rival Gaza-based parties.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also said that there could be no “preconditions.”
“These are not Palestinian conditions, they are Israeli obligations which must be met,” the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Shalom’s remarks came ahead of a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Egypt on Thursday to decide whether to endorse a move to direct peace talks after nearly three months of unsuccessful indirect negotiations.
Direct peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis were broken off in December 2008 when Israel launched a deadly onslaught on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in the impoverished territory.
HM/HGH/MMN – Press TV
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