Ashton insists no deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian talks

EUROPEAN UNION foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton insists that talks between the Palestinians and Israelis have not ended in deadlock and expressed the hope that efforts to restart serious negotiations will bear fruit.

“I don’t think there’s an impasse, I still remain hopeful that with goodwill, they can continue to talk,” she said yesterday, following a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Amman.

However, Mr Abbas said that Jordanian-brokered informal talks aimed at setting the border of a Palestinian state ended in failure because Israel did not submit concrete proposals by yesterday’s deadline.

The Israeli side argues that the deadline is in April while Baroness Ashton has said the deadline was not “written in stone, but was there to give a sense of dynamic or momentum”.

Mr Abbas plans to discuss policy with Arab League members during a meeting in Cairo scheduled for February 4th. However, Palestinian observers do not expect the league, preoccupied with the crisis in Syria, to take a decisive stand. Mr Abbas is under pressure from the EU, US, UN and Russia quartet to continue talks about talks. These are aimed at resuming high-level negotiations leading to the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the creation of a Palestinian state.

He is, however, under strong pressure from Palestinians, particularly those living in territory controlled by Israel, to stick to his demands that Israel freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied in 1967, and agree to negotiate on the basis of the pre-occupation line.

According to Israeli watchdog Peace Now, Israel in 2011 accelerated settlement construction by 20 per cent. An unnamed Israeli official has said: “We presented the Palestinian side [with] the central points that determine our policy on dealing with the territorial issue.” However, the official refused to reveal the Israeli ideas or term them a clear proposal. Mr Abbas dismissed them and said the main obstacles to negotiations were settlements and settler violence against Palestinians.

Former Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath described the Israeli effort as a “composition about peace done by a high-school student”.

The Palestinian side complains that Israel has refused to submit concrete proposals ever since George Mitchell, US president Barack Obama’s former envoy, opened indirect talks in 2009.

In a last-ditch attempt to restart negotiations, Jordanian foreign minister Nasser Judeh brokered several meetings between Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Yitzhak Molcho, an adviser to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Mr Judeh rejects a return to the 1967 line, opposes withdrawal from east Jerusalem claimed by Israel as its exclusive capital, and insists on retaining parts of the West Bank. Mr Abbas, weakened by 19 years of fruitless negotiations, is in no position to accept Israeli demands.

Palestinian Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi has told Ms Ashton that Israel is “thwarting all efforts to resume talks” by escalating “settlement activities in and around Jerusalem”, annexing “Palestinian land and natural resources” and evicting and deporting Palestinians. Following the detention of five Palestinian politicians, she also said Israel was carrying out “arbitrary arrests”.