Kerry to Present Israeli-Palestinian Framework Deal 'Within Weeks'

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that he intends to present the framework agreement setting out the principles for resolution of the core issues between Israel and the Palestinians within a few weeks, an Israeli businessman present at the meeting in Davos told Haaretz.

Kerry was speaking to businessmen during a meeting on the margins of the Davos economic conference of Israeli and Palestinian businesspeople as part of the Breaking the Impasse initiative, whose goal is to push the leadership in Jerusalem and Ramallah to move ahead toward a peace agreement.

“Kerry is simply a bulldozer and he doesn’t intend to stop,” the Israeli businessman said. “The impression is that the 1967 lines with exchanges of territory as a basis for the borders of the Palestinian state will be in the document.”

Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for almost two hours on Friday morning and discussed the framework agreement with him. However, statements released by both parties after the meeting presented conflicting versions about the nature of the document.

While Netanyahu tried to downplay its importance, the Americans stressed its significance.

At a press conference Netanyahu called after his meeting with Kerry, Netanyahu said the secretary is not attempting to bring the two sides to sign a framework agreement, but solely to put forth ideas for a path toward progress in the negotiations.

However, Deputy State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf presented the opposite view in the daily press briefing in Washington. “This is not an American plan. The framework that we are in discussions with is based on our discussions with both sides and the parties leading up to this point … The framework ... will guide the discussion on all of the issues going forward,” Harf said.

In Kerry’s address to the conference, he outlined several U.S. principles for solving the core issues: an independent state for the Palestinians wherever they may be; security arrangements for Israel that leave it more secure; a full, phased and final withdrawal of the Israeli army, a just and agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem; an end to the conflict and all claims; and mutual recognition of the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Kerry warned in his speech that if talks fail, “for Israel, the demographic dynamic will make it impossible to preserve its future as a democratic Jewish state,” adding, “Today’s status quo cannot last forever.”

After Kerry’s talks last week with the Israelis about the framework agreement, this week will be devoted to talks with the Palestinians. The head of the PLO negotiating team, Saeb Erekat and the head of the Palestinian general intelligence, Majid Faraj, will go to Washington this week for meetings with Kerry and his staff.

At this point, both the Israelis and Palestinians reject most of Kerry’s proposals and are hardening their positions daily. Both sides have come out with aggressive statements to make the other side derail the talks and bear responsibility for their failure.

“I do not intend to evacuate any settlements or uproot a single Israeli,” the prime minister said this weekend.

Netanyahu has refused at this point to accept the 1967 borders with exchanges of territory identical in size, and instead presented an expanded version of the settlement blocs he wants annexed to Israel. He also wants to lease or purchase the land on which settlements sit outside the main blocs, and that they would have a special status within the Palestinian state.

On the matter of Jerusalem, Netanyahu has so far refused any mention in the framework agreement of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

A senior Fatah official, Azzam al-Ahmad, considered close to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a lecture last week in Amman that, according to the proposals Israel raised in talks with Kerry, “the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem will be on the shore of the Dead Sea.”

The secretary of the PLO executive committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat that Israel claimed in talks that Jerusalem’s borders are the suburbs of Ramallah to the gates of Bethlehem and the Jordan Valley. “That makes it possible in the best case to call Abu Dis or the village of Aqab the Palestinian capital,” he said.

Ahmad says the Palestinians are demanding that their capital be in the six square kilometers that was East Jerusalem in 1967. “The issue of Jerusalem is enough for us to say no to Kerry, and we will turn out the light.”

The Palestinians have rejected Netanyahu’s demand that Israel have exclusive security control in the Jordan Valley, the right to pursue terrorists throughout the future Palestinian state, and that Israel Defense Forces troops remain in the Jordan Valley until the Palestinians have met the test of implementation of the security agreement.

Abbas has told Kerry the Palestinians would accept a shared arrangement with Israel and Jordan for three years following the peace agreement.

The most serious point of contention is Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which the Palestinians reject. In one of Abbas’ meetings with Kerry, Abbas showed the secretary of state a photo of President Harry Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948, in which the president had crossed out the words “Jewish state” and wrote “state of Israel.” “I am willing to go according to Truman’s policy,” Abbas told Kerry.

Kerry will continue to pursue efforts toward a framework agreement. However, it is believed that an agreed-upon document will be impossible to attain and Kerry will have to decide whether to present an agreement and compel the parties to accept it.