BICOM

Details of two previously unseen drafts of the failed 2014 Israeli-Palestinian “framework agreement” have emerged.

In an exclusive report in Haaretz, Washington correspondent Amir Tibon has revealed details of the draft agreements, which went unsigned by both parties as the negotiation process broke down. The documents were intended to be the basis for the final stretch of negotiations between the two sides in the process spearheaded by then US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The first document is an internal US draft agreement based on secret negotiations held in London. The draft was prepared two days before a meeting between Kerry and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The draft discussed mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine and said peace “will need to be based on a shared commitment to fulfilling the vision of two states for two peoples, with full equal rights and no discrimination against any member of any ethnic or religious community”.

On refugees, the document states that “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state will provide a national homeland for all Palestinians, including the refugees, and thereby bring an end to the historic Palestinian refugee issue and the assertion of any claims against Israel arising from it”.

They document also specified that the agreed borders of Israel and the Palestinian state “will be negotiated based on the 1967 lines with mutually-agreed swaps”.

Netanyahu verbally expressed his openness toward this draft of the “framework agreement,” although he never accepted it in writing. Abbas rejected the draft, in part because it did not explicitly call for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. The US delegation subsequently produced a second document which reworded some components of the paper on 15 March 2014, this time without consultation with the Israelis, in the hope that Abbas’s approval could be acquired before presenting the new draft to the Israelis.

Although the new wording was more favourable to Palestinian concerns – including stipulating that “both Israel and Palestine [are] to have their internationally recognised capitals in Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem serving as the Palestinian capital” – Abbas did not respond to the draft.

Talks between the sides later broke down after the PA applied to join several international organisations and disagreements over the release of a fourth tranche of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.