fbpx

Comment and Opinion

Huffington Post: Brinkmanship Risks Taking Israelis and Palestinians to the Edge, by Dr Toby Greene

[ssba]

In a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israelis and Palestinians that it was their responsibility to take the tough decisions. He was forced to return to Washington last week without an agreement to extend negotiations beyond their current deadline at the end of April. He highlighted unhelpful steps on both sides.

It need not have been this way. Midday on Tuesday 1 April, Israeli negotiators thought a package deal to extend the talks for another nine months was all but done. They were ready to release another 400 prisoners on top of 26 remaining from a list agreed in July 2013, and restrain settlement construction. To help Netanyahu force the deal through a sceptical Israeli cabinet, the US would release former-US intelligence officer Jonathan Pollard, caught spying for Israel thirty years ago.

Israeli cabinet ministers were on standby to vote, with Netanyahu hoping to secure a narrow majority, and Secretary Kerry expected to fly in to close the deal. Then they switched on their televisions to see Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signing applications to join fifteen international conventions, in a brazenly choreographed, televised ceremony in Ramallah.

The Palestinians claimed to be responding to Israel’s failure to release on time, four days earlier, the final batch of 26 prisoners, including fourteen Arab Israelis, promised to them under a July 2013 deal. That deal involved Israel releasing 104 prisoners serving long sentences for terror offences, in return for the Palestinians negotiating for nine months without taking unilateral steps to gain international recognition.

Read the article in full at Huffington Post.