JERUSALEM, May 10: Israel put the Palestinians on notice on Wednesday to become negotiating partners by the end of the year or else the government will move ahead with a plan to fix the borders on its own terms.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and senior members of his cabinet, which was sworn into office last week, said the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) must recognise Israel’s right to exist and respect previous mutual accords in order for talks to become a possibility.
If there is no such change of heart, Mr Olmert would then push on with his convergence plan under which Israel intends to retain control of parts of the occupied West Bank regarded by the Palestinians as an integral part of their promised future state.
“We will wait for a month, two months, three months, six months, and if we see no change, then we will probably move forward even without an agreement,” Mr Olmert told a group of visiting foreign mayors on Tuesday night.
“If the Palestinians do not accept these conditions, Israel will have to determine its borders by itself.”
Mr Olmert has made fixing the borders the prime task of his administration, with or without agreement from the Palestinians.
Under the terms of the convergence plan, Mr Olmert is set to pull some 70,000 settlers out of the occupied West Bank.
In return, he plans to cement control of the large blocs where the vast majority of the quarter of a million settlers live.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made clear that Mr Olmert’s comments did not mean that settlers would begin to be pulled out of the West Bank in six months time.
“This does not signify that Israel is going to leave (parts of the West Bank) in six months, but I understand that Mr Olmert is laying out the path which he intends to follow,” said Ms Livni.
“For Israel, it would be better to have international agreement but the prospects of having a Palestinian partner appear sadly non-existent,” added Ms Livni, who is Mr Olmert’s official number two.
Hamas, behind dozens of anti-Israeli suicide attacks in the past five years, is officially committed to the destruction of the Jewish state and rejects the idea of a negotiated settlement to the Middle East conflict.
Peace talks are officially the remit of the Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, a moderate who has expressed a willingness to immediately resume negotiations.
However, the Israeli government says Mr Abbas cannot serve as a fig leaf for the Hamas hardliners, and Ms Livni has dismissed him as ‘irrelevant’.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the government would wait until the end of the year to determine whether negotiations can be held with Mr Abbas.
“If by the start of next year, we see that there is no Palestinian partner, we will begin to promote our initiative after having mobilised support (for convergence) from the international community,” he said.
Mr Ramon said the aim was to complete the plan’s implementation by the end of 2008.
“From the moment we set out on the road, it will be possible to complete the process by the end of 2008,” he told army radio. “By that date, we will deploy on the border which will mark the permanent frontier of the state of Israel.”
Mr Olmert regards international support for convergence as crucial to its chances of success. —AFP
