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Thursday October 16, 2003

Dueling diplomacy

The left and right hold separate Mideast peace talks –

jerusalem (jta) | Just as many people in Israel are driving the last nail into Oslo’s coffin, along comes a reincarnation of the decade-old accords.

The faces were familiar — Yossi Beilin leading the 40-member Israeli team, with Yasser Abed Rabbo on the Palestinian side — but this time the secret proposal for Middle East compromise was drafted not in Norway’s capital but in the Jordanian resort town of Shuneh, on the Dead Sea.

Under the plan, Israel reportedly would relinquish sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and the Palestinians would give up the “right of return” for refugees who fled their homes during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Neither delegation to the talks had any official weight, although Abed Rabbo — a former Cabinet member in the Palestinian Authority and a longtime Palestinian negotiator — said the authority would endorse the plan.

Israeli politicians criticized the plan, which is being called the Geneva Accords, due to the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s role in financing and mediating the two and a half years of negotiations.

“The opposition is negotiating behind the government’s back with the Palestinians, while we are in a serious conflict with them, in a war against Palestinian terror, which is directed and encouraged by some of the people with whom the left-wing officials have met,” Israel’s health minister, Dan Naveh, said.

The Israeli delegation says Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was aware of the negotiations, a charge aides in the Prime Minister’s Office denied.

Israeli officials have said such opposition efforts are counterproductive.

“At a time when the whole world is becoming convinced by our arguments against Arafat, people stand up among us and come to a final agreement with them. This puts us in a ridiculous light,” a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told Ha’aretz.

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