Israel formally accepts Quartet formula for resuming talks

Netanyahu welcomes Quartet's call After consulting with ministers, Netanyahu welcomes Quartet's call for "direct negotiations without pre-conditions," despite having "a number of reservations"; calls on PA to enter talks without delay. Israel on Sunday formally accepted the Quartet's proposal for re-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, following a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his senior ministers.
"Israel welcomes the Quartet's call for direct negotiations without pre-conditions with the Palestinian Authority, which was already suggested by US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, even though Israel has a number of reservations which it will bring up in the negotiations."
The statement called on the PA to enter negotiations without delay.
Following Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas's speeches to the UN last month, during which Abbas said he was filing a request to the Security Council for full UN membership for "Palestine," the Quartet issued a formula for renewing talks.
The statement urged the parties "to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions." It proposed a "preparatory meeting" between the parties within a month to agree to an agenda and "method of proceeding in the negotiation," and suggested that the two sides commit to the objective of reaching an agreement "within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012."
The statement also said the expectation is that the parties will come up with a comprehensive proposal on territory and security within three months, and to have made "substantial progress" within six months. To facilitate this, an international conference will be held in Moscow "at the appropriate time."
Netanyahu has in the past objected to the idea – as presented in the Quartet proposal – of isolating security and territories from the other core issues of Jerusalem and refugees, saying that if an agreement on the territorial issue was reached, the Palestinians would have no incentive to compromise later on the issues of refugees and Jerusalem. Rather, his position in the past was that all issues should be discussed simultaneously.
Key U.S. lawmakers are blocking about $200 million in Palestinian aid in response to the territories’ UN statehood bid, congressional aides said Saturday.
Members of the House Foreign AffairsCommittee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have frozen the funding “until the Palestinian statehood issue is sorted out,” one of the aides told AFP.
The economic package is separate from security aid, which the US lawmakers say would be counterproductive to block. They fear that withholding those funds would weaken the ability of Palestinian security forces to quell anti-Israel violence.
A coalition of Israel-backing Democrats and conservative Republican lawmakers are angered by the Palestinian bid for United Nations membership. Both the United States and Israel insist that only direct negotiations can produce an accord leading to Palestinian statehood.
U.S. lawmakers earlier warned against the Palestinian bid.
“There must be consequences for Palestinian and U.N. actions that undermine any hope for true and lasting peace,” Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on September 23.
Representative Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the House panel that oversees foreign aid, warned that the annual $500 million in economic and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) was at risk.
Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the number-two House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer, have accused Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas of shunning direct peace talks in favor of “diplomatic warfare” against Israel.
“Congress will not sit idly by. The U.S. will likely reconsider its assistance program for the PA and other aspects of US-Palestinian relations should the Palestinians choose to move forward in requesting a vote on statehood,” they said in a joint September 22 opinion article in the New York Daily News.
The Palestinians need to show flexibility and get back to the negotiating table, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said in an interview with Egypt’s Al-Hayat TV released Saturday.
Asked about the Palestinians’ quest for full recognition at the United Nations, the top U.S. diplomat appeared to try to downplay the importance of the ongoing effort, which Washington opposes and has promised to veto.
She said the U.S. concern was not what happened or did not happen there –but the need for negotiations to resume for real progress to be made.
“President (Barack) Obama and I very much want to see a Palestinian state, and I have been publicly on record in favor of that since the 1990s,” she said, according to a transcript of the interview released by the State Department.
Yet “no matter what happens or doesn’t happen in the United Nations, unless we can get the Palestinians and the Israelis to negotiate over the boundaries of the state, the security provisions, what happens in Jerusalem, what happens with refugees, water, all of the issues we know so well have to be resolved, we’re going to raise expectations without being able to deliver,” Clinton said.
“I want the Palestinians to have their own state; I want them to govern themselves,” she said in the interview on Thursday.
“We want to see both sides back at the table,” Clinton said.
“We don’t want to see provocative actions. We’ve said that about the recent announcements from the Israeli government, but we also know that the Palestinians have to be willing to negotiate,” she said.
“And it’s hard for them because they feel like they’ve been at this for a while and nothing has happened. Both sides have their case to be made. Make it at the negotiating table. And that’s what we’re pushing for,” she said.
However, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has assailed a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, saying the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations is doomed to fail.
Any plan to divide a Palestinian state would be unacceptable, Khamenei said on Saturday, adding that such a state could exist temporarily as part of "liberated territory".
"Our claim is freedom of Palestine, not part of Palestine. Any plan that partitions Palestine is totally rejected," Khamenei told the gathering. "Palestine spans from the river [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] sea, nothing less."
He added that the Palestinians should not limit themselves to seeking a country within the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip which would implicitly recognise Israel because "all land belongs to Palestinians."
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reacted angrily to Khamenei's speech.
"The declarations of hatred from the ayatollah regime on the intention to destroy the state of Israel reinforces the government's steadfast position for the security needs of Israel's citizens and the demand for recognition of Israel as the Jewish state," Netanyahu said.
Khamenei, who spoke at a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran, called Israel a "cancerous tumour" that should be removed.
Iran supports the Palestinian Hamas group, which rules Gaza and which does not back the statehood bid pushed by Abbas and his Western-backed Fatah movement.
The conference in Tehran was attended by senior Palestinian leaders, including Syria-based Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, who told the gathering that "resistance" was the only option left for the Palestinians.
Meanwhile,  Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will visit UN Security Council member Colombia on October 11 to discuss his bid for UN member state status, President Juan Manuel Santos said.
"The Palestinian leader had planned to come to Central America and he proposed a visit. We said he would be welcome and he will be here on October 11," Santos said in a statement.
Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin had announced the visit on Friday, but said the date was still under discussion.
Santos said the visit by Abbas would not help sway him to change his opposition to the Palestinian bid for full UN recognition, saying a Palestinian state should only be recognized through a negotiated solution with Israel.
Colombia has said it would abstain in any Security Council vote.
"Colombia supports the right of the Palestinians to have their state and Colombia hopes this will come as a result of an agreement between the parties, so they can truly live in peace," Santos said.
The Security Council has taken up the request for full recognition of a Palestinian state over the vehement opposition of Israel and the United States.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said Thursday that eight members of the Security Council had pledged to approve the bid, one shy of the nine votes needed to advance it to the General Assembly.
Britain, France, Germany, Bosnia and Portugal have so far not revealed which way they will vote, while the United States has said it would veto the move -- which would effectively kill it in the Security Council.
Colombia is a traditional regional ally of the United States, which has supported Bogota in the fight against rebels and drug-trafficking with aid worth some $6 billion since 2001.
In other news, at least three Palestinians were wounded on Saturday afternoon in an Israeli airstrike on the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoon, medics and witnesses said.
An Israeli reconnaissance drone fired at least one missile at a group of people, leaving three Palestinians injured, one of whom seriously, Adham Abu Selmeya, Gaza emergency spokesman told Xinhua.
Israel's media quoted an Israeli army spokesman as saying that the three wounded are members of al-Qassam Brigades, Islamic Hamas movement's armed wing, which were trying to fire homemade rockets from the area at Israel.
In late August, the Gaza Strip witnessed a wave of violence which killed about 26 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others. Three Israelis were killed after Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets and projectiles at the southern Israel.
The escalation of violence in the coastal enclave came after Israel accused militants from Gaza of carrying out an armed attack towards the Israeli city of Eilat. Eight Israelis were killed in the attack.