BICOM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet today with his forum of eight senior cabinet ministers to discuss his recent visit and address at the United Nations in New York. At The meeting ministers will also discuss the proposal by the Quartet, and will formulate an official Israeli response. The Quartet released a statement last Friday calling on Israel and the Palestinians to renew negotiations within a month. Netanyahu looks likely to accept the Quartet proposal but told the media that Israel will not declare a new settlement construction freeze as a precondition to negotiations.

Yesterday, Netanyahu told Charlie Rose in an interview on PBS, that he is ready to negotiate “anywhere any time, without preconditions.” Netanyahu said that the non-fulfillment of a two-state solution is not in Israel’s interest, saying: “I don’t want the Palestinian population incorporated as citizens of Israel or as subjects of Israel so they have to live in their own state…I just want to make sure that that state doesn’t become another Gaza, doesn’t become another mini-Iran which could destroy the one and only Jewish state,” he told Charlie Rose.

Meanwhile, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will also meet with his senior Palestinian officials to discuss the Quartet statement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone with Abbas yesterday and urged the Palestinian leader to adopt the Quartet statement and to renew peace talks. Abbas said yesterday that he would only comment on the proposal after he had met with his leadership. He emphasised his stance that Israel must accept pre-1967 borderlines as a basis for negotiations and completely freeze settlement construction in order to proceed with direct peace talks to resume.