JERUSALEM, May 4: A US timeline for bolstering Israeli-Palestinian talks met its first resistance on Friday when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office said it could not commit to some of the demands, citing security concerns.
The timeline asks Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by mid-June to start deploying his forces to halt rocket fire and smuggling by Gaza militants, according to officials with access to the document.
It also asks Israel to reciprocate by taking steps to ease the movement of people and goods between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
The United States presented the timeline separately to Abbas and Olmert last week, but it is unclear how hard the Bush administration is prepared to push the parties to complete a list of so-called “benchmarks”.
Israeli officials raised concerns Israel was being asked to ease restrictions on Palestinian movements without assurances that Abbas has completed his own commitments on security.
While Israel appeared prepared to lift restrictions in the West Bank starting in mid-May, it has serious reservations about other demands, including one that would allow Palestinian bus convoys to travel between Gaza and the West Bank by July 1, officials said.
“Some of the ideas Israel is already implementing, others are already well advanced, and there are some that Israel will not be able to address in the present because of security concerns,” an official in Olmert’s office said.
Israeli resistance to elements of the US plan followed an earlier rift between the close allies over Washington's decision to hold limited contacts with non-Hamas ministers in a Palestinian unity government.
Olmert is boycotting the cabinet in its entirety.
Abbas could have also have trouble implementing parts of the American plan. A crackdown by forces loyal to his secular Fatah faction could spark a backlash from Hamas’s armed wing and other militant groups behind the rocket attacks against Israel.—Reuters
