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Kerry-Abbas Visit Canceled as Mideast Talks Falter Kerry-Abbas Visit Canceled as Mideast Talks Falter
(about 5 hours later)
JERUSALEM — The fraught Mideast peace talks were thrown into confusion on Tuesday as a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was canceled after Mr. Abbas moved to join 15 international agencies, a move vigorously opposed by Israel and the United States. JERUSALEM — The Middle East peace talks verged on a breakdown Tuesday night, after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority defied the United States and Israel by taking concrete steps to join 15 international agencies — a move to gain the benefits of statehood outside the negotiations process.
Mr. Abbas, who has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public to press his case for statehood through United Nations agencies, said Tuesday that he was taking that course because Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of March, as promised when the talks started last summer. The move, which appeared to catch American and Israeli officials by surprise, prompted Secretary of State John Kerry to cancel a planned return to the region on Wednesday, in which he had expected to complete an agreement extending negotiations through 2015.
“We do not want to use this right against anybody or confront anybody,” Mr. Abbas said as he signed the papers, in a speech broadcast live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for solution, this becomes our right.” In that emerging deal, the United States would release an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago, while Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and slow down construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Israel and the United States have argued that Palestinian membership in these international agencies is a mistaken approach to Palestinian statehood, which should instead be negotiated directly between Israel and the Palestinians. Congress passed a law saying such membership could trigger a withdrawal of United States financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and other steps. Mr. Abbas, who had vowed not to seek membership in international bodies until the April 29 expiration of the talks that Mr. Kerry started last summer, said he was taking this course because Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of March, as promised.
Mr. Kerry, who had flown from Israel to Brussels for a NATO meeting on Tuesday and was planning to return to see Mr. Abbas in Ramallah, in the West Bank, on Wednesday, said he was no longer making the trip. Israeli officials say they are not bound by their pledge because no meaningful negotiations had taken place since November.
It was unclear from his remarks whether Mr. Kerry or Mr. Abbas — or both — had canceled the meeting. Nor was it clear what the cancellation might mean for the peace talks, but Mr. Kerry insisted at a news conference in Brussels that the peace process was not dead. American officials, while rattled, said the Palestinians appeared to be using leverage against Israel rather than trying to scuttle the negotiations. Mr. Abbas, they noted, did not move toward joining the International Criminal Court, a step Israel fears most because the Palestinians could use the court to contest Israel’s presence in the West Bank.
“What is important to say about the Middle East right now is it is completely premature tonight to draw any kind of judgment, certainly any final judgment, about today’s events and where things are,” Mr. Kerry told reporters. “This is a moment to be really cleareyed and sober about this process. It is difficult, it is emotional, it requires huge decisions, some of them with great political difficulty, all of which need to come together simultaneously.” Still, a senior American official said Mr. Kerry’s decision not to return to the region immediately reflected a growing impatience in the White House, which believes his mediating efforts have reached their limit and that the two sides need to work their way out of the current impasse.
He urged both sides to show restraint and said that each side indicated it was prepared to explore the possibilities for peace. “Obviously, it’s moments like this when we all need to remember exactly what brought us to this effort in the first place, what the goal is, and where everybody wants to end up,” he said. In announcing the moves, Mr. Abbas said, “This is our right.” He has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public to leverage the nonmember observer-state status they won at the United Nations in 2012 to join a total of 63 international bodies.
A senior Palestinian official said the 15 agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join — out of more than 60 possible — did not include the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice, where many Palestinians hope to prosecute Israelis for what they consider war crimes, including the demolition of homes, arrests and killings of Palestinians, and the building of settlements. The 15 did include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and agencies dealing with women’s and children’s rights, the official said. “We do not want to use this right against anybody or to confront anybody,” he said, as he signed the membership applications live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for a solution, this becomes our right.”
Officials involved in the negotiations said that a deal under discussion would involve the release of Jonathan J. Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, along with the promised fourth batch of long-serving prisoners – including Arab-Israeli citizens – and 400 other Palestinian prisoners. It also included a partial freeze on Israeli construction in West Bank settlements, in exchange for the Palestinians’ continued commitment to refrain from joining international agencies. The United States voted against the Palestinians’ 2012 bid in the United Nations General Assembly, and it blocked a similar effort in 2011 at the Security Council, arguing that negotiations with Israel were the only path to peace and statehood.
Mr. Kerry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel negotiated details of the emerging deal in meetings here that began Monday night and continued early Tuesday. But the agreement was awaiting approval from the White House regarding Mr. Pollard as well as from President Abbas, and Mr. Abbas’s action Tuesday night may well make it irrelevant. Washington has also vigorously opposed Palestinian membership in the international agencies, which under a law passed by Congress could prompt a withdrawal of financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and a shutdown of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington.
Israel refused to release the fourth batch of prisoners unless Mr. Abbas agreed to extend negotiations, arguing that its original commitment was not binding because no meaningful talks had taken place since November. Israel’s turnabout on Tuesday, eased by the promise of Mr. Pollard’s release, may have come too late. While the Palestinians’ pursuit of the international route is widely viewed as a poison pill for the peace talks, both Mr. Abbas and Mr. Kerry held out hope Tuesday night that they could still be salvaged. The agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join Tuesday included the Geneva and Vienna conventions and those dealing with women’s and children’s rights.
“Today is the last chance that Israel has to release these prisoners,” Jameel Shehada, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, had said in a radio interview Tuesday morning. “Yesterday, the leadership had taken a clear stance to go to international agencies because it is very clear that the Israelis are not interested in abiding by their part of the deal and releasing the prisoners.” “It is completely premature tonight to draw any kind of judgment, certainly any kind of final judgment, about today’s events and where things are,” Mr. Kerry told reporters in Brussels, where he was meeting with NATO foreign ministers on the Ukraine crisis.
Mr. Abbas said Tuesday that the Palestinians “will continue our efforts to reach a peaceful solution through negotiations.” But he also said that if Israel did not release the promised prisoners, he would join the rest of the 63 international agencies for which Palestine became eligible after the United Nations General Assembly granted it nonmember observer-state status in 2012. This “is a right for us that we found,” he said. “We are determined to reach a settlement through negotiations and through peaceful, popular resistance. We reject anything else.” “I’m not going to get into the who, why, what, when, where, how or why we’re where we are today,” he added. “The important thing is to keep the process moving and find a way to see whether the parties are prepared to move forward.”
Earlier, a senior official involved in the negotiations had said the terms of the developing agreement would be for Mr. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of espionage more than a quarter century ago, to be released before Passover, which begins the evening of April 14. Israel would free a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners as promised at the start of the talks, as well as 400 other prisoners, many of them women and children, who were not convicted of murder. “Even tonight,” Mr. Kerry said, “both parties say they want to continue to try to find a way forward.”
Among the prisoners would be 14 Arab-Israelis, whose release is deeply controversial in Israel because it raises questions about sovereignty, and could cause a crisis in its governing coalition, with some ministers threatening to quit if they are freed. President Obama has given Mr. Kerry broad latitude to try to keep the process alive, even authorizing him to discuss the possible release of Jonathan J. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence officer serving a life sentence in the United States for espionage, whose release Israel has long sought. That would only be as part of a broader package of measures that American officials said would give the negotiations a genuine chance to succeed.
Israel would also agree to show “restraint” in building in its West Bank settlements, which most of the world views as illegal. The partial freeze would apply to the issuing of government tenders for housing; projects underway would be allowed to continue, and institutional projects like schools could still move forward. East Jerusalem, which Palestinians consider the capital of their future state, would not be included in the freeze. Such a move would antagonize the nation’s intelligence agencies, senior officials said, but might be worth the cost to keep the talks from collapsing altogether. Mr. Pollard is eligible for parole in 2015, they noted, so his value as a bargaining chip is diminishing.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, and Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas, did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday. Mr. Shehada had said in the morning radio interview that “on principle, the leadership rejects the idea of extending the talks, basically because no progress has been made.” Mr. Obama, officials said, was in frequent contact with Mr. Kerry when both were in Europe last week, and during Mr. Kerry’s travels there this week. The president has rejected previous pleas by the Israelis to release Mr. Pollard, but with Mr. Kerry having invested so deeply in the peace process, officials said, Mr. Obama wanted to back him up.
“However, if the U.S. promises and the Israelis reassure that the negotiations need a limited amount of time to achieve progress, then the leadership may be more lenient,” he said. “But there must be a complete halt to the settlements, and more prisoners must be released.” Whether, and how, to use Mr. Pollard has been vigorously debated within the administration. While some officials argue that he should be used only to break the logjam on final-status issues — the borders of a new Palestinian state, for example — Mr. Kerry has argued that these issues will all be decided as a package at the end of the talks. Mr. Kerry has argued, Mr. Pollard could be more useful now in keeping the talks alive, given the dwindling term of his prison sentence, according to officials.
Within Israel, heated debate began Tuesday over details of the possible deal. Mr. Pollard’s cause has been embraced by the same right-wing politicians who oppose the release of Arab-Israeli prisoners, any slowdown in settlement construction and in some cases the peace talks themselves. Still, it is the most significant crisis yet for talks that have been troubled from the start, with few beyond Mr. Kerry and his team believing there was much chance of closing the gaps in the two sides’ positions. Mr. Kerry has made the peace process a personal mission, with a dozen trips to the region in the past year, including two over the past week, interrupting his efforts to counter Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.
While Mr. Netanyahu could win significant political cover with a preholiday homecoming for Mr. Pollard, who was granted Israeli citizenship while in prison, his coalition is deeply divided over the Palestinian question. Several ministers have vowed to vote against any release of imprisoned Israeli citizens. The question is whether they would quit — and possibly force new elections — if a majority of the cabinet approves the deal. While Middle East analysts widely praised Mr. Kerry’s determination, many thought he was on a fool’s errand. He long ago abandoned his original goal of achieving a final-status agreement within nine months, and in recent weeks he even de-emphasized his proposed framework of core principles for a deal, focusing instead simply on extending the timetable.
Yair Shamir, the minister of agriculture, said, “A lot of things are being mixed up that don’t go together.” “It’s a process leading nowhere,” Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and political scientist, said Tuesday morning. “The basic compromises that this Israeli government is willing to endorse are unacceptable to the majority of the Palestinians.” He added, “There is no chance.”
“We must insist on our principles, on our land, on not releasing terrorists — certainly not Israeli-Arab citizens. If this comes up for a vote, I will definitely vote against,” Mr. Shamir, a member of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction, said on Israel Radio. “My heart is with Pollard if he is not released. Of course he should be released, but for other reasons, and not as a bribe.” Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, said: “All of the indications are that this is moribund. We’re now into Plan B, which has two parts: the blame, which is well underway, and a last-ditch effort by the United States not to have the collapse lead to violence.”
Michael B. Oren, who recently finished a tour as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said Mr. Pollard should be released “without any connection to diplomatic or any other moves” but that Israel also had to ensure “the talks will not collapse and, if they do, we are not responsible for the collapse.” Israeli officials remained silent about Mr. Abbas’s move Tuesday night. A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to discuss it, or how it might affect the deal that had emerged earlier in the day to continue the talks for at least another nine months.
“We have to ask ourselves, have the Palestinians become addicted to Israeli incentives?” Mr. Oren said in a radio interview. The move by Mr. Abbas came after a frenzied day of rumors in Israel, where officials said a deal was emerging in which Mr. Pollard would be freed before the Passover holiday, which starts April 14. Israel would free the remaining long-serving prisoners — including 14 Palestinian citizens of Israel, whose release is particularly delicate because it raises questions of sovereignty — as well as 400 others, many of them women and children, who had not committed murder.
In addition, Israel would promise to “show restraint” in settlement construction, the official said, by not starting new government housing projects in the West Bank. Projects underway would be allowed to continue, the official said, and East Jerusalem would not be included.
Instead, Mr. Abbas made a show of signing the documents on live television, saying that Palestine would become a member of most of the 15 bodies “as soon as we apply,” and that he would join the rest of the 63 international agencies “if Israel does not release the prisoners.”
On Tuesday night in Brussels, Mr. Kerry invoked a longstanding axiom of the peace process: that the mediator cannot want it to work more than the parties themselves.
“The president is desirous of trying to see how we can make our best efforts in order to find a way to facilitate,” Mr. Kerry said. “But facilitation is only as good as the willingness of leaders to actually make decisions when they’re put in front of them.”