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July 28, 2000
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israelis and Palestinians were resuming contacts, even as intriguing details emerged Thursday about proposals made at the failed Camp David summit on which the negotiators could build as they work to salvage the peace process. Israeli negotiator Oded Eran was to meet his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat on Sunday, said Gilead Sher, a member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh met Yasser Arafat's bureau chief Tayeb Abdel Rahim on Wednesday evening at the Erez checkpoint between Israel and the Gaza Strip. After the meeting, Sneh portrayed Tuesday's Camp David breakdown as merely a pause. "It would be a great pity if people were to lose their lives for nothing between one round (of negotiations) and the next," said Sneh, who has been working with the Palestinians to prevent violence following the failure of the summit. Sher, speaking to Israel army radio, confirmed Thursday that the Israeli delegation at Camp David discussed a proposal for a Palestinian presidential office in the Muslim Quarter of contested Jerusalem. Such an idea would have been almost inconceivable not long ago. Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who was also at the summit, confirmed that the proposal was discussed but implied Israel would not have accepted it. For years Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a capital in east Jerusalem alongside Israel's capital in west Jerusalem. Israel has long insisted that the city must remain united under exclusive Israeli sovereignty. But at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reportedly offered the Palestinians control of certain Arab neighborhoods just inside Jerusalem's boundaries, a vaguely defined "special regime" in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the walled Old City, administrative autonomy over Jerusalem's Muslim holy places and unhindered access to the Al-Aqsa mosque by means of a road or bridge. In addition to renewing contacts with the Palestinians, Barak began the task of restoring his shattered parliamentary majority. Feelers were put out to Eli Ishai, chairman of the religious Shas party which quit Barak's coalition because it was opposed to the Camp David talks. Ishai said Shas is in no hurry to return ining the coalition. Sneh, a close confidant of Barak, was opposed to an alliance with the Likud because this, he said, would halt the peace process. "I think that in the Likud we have no partners. We will have to build another government. We will not deviate from that line (the peace process) and we will not play with some phony act of unity," he told Israel radio. |
