RAMALLAH // The United States secretary of state, John Kerry, returns to Israel this week only days after his last visit, following a Palestinian warning that his proposals on security would lead to “total failure”.
Mr Kerry will travel to Israel on Wednesday, five days after he last returned from Jerusalem and after spending most of the weekend meeting in Washington with Israeli leaders.
This will be Mr Kerry’s ninth trip to the Middle East as secretary of state for talks with Israel and the Palestinians aimed at crafting a final status agreement to end the decades-long conflict.
“This is an important time in the negotiations, and he felt it was important to return to the region,” state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington, adding that Mr Kerry would spend two days in Israel and Ramallah for talks.
The announcement came after Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top official with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said on Monday that Mr Kerry’s ideas on the future configuration of security arrangements, which were presented to the Palestinian leadership last week, had provoked a “real crisis”.
“These ideas will drive Kerry’s efforts to an impasse and to total failure because he is treating our issues with a high degree of indifference,” Mr Abed Rabbo said.
The proposals focus on security arrangements in the Jordan Valley which runs down the eastern flank of the West Bank, with commentators saying it would allow Israel to maintain a long-term military presence there.
The US suggestions reportedly won a positive reaction from the Israelis, but were sharply dismissed by the Palestinians as “very bad ideas, which we cannot accept”.
Israel has always insisted on maintaining a military presence in the Jordan Valley, but the notion has been rejected out of hand by the Palestinians who claim it would make a mockery of their sovereignty and merely perpetuate the occupation.
“He [Mr Kerry] only wants to win over the Israelis and [allow] settlement expansion at our expense,” Mr Abed Rabbo said.
Ms Psaki denied reports that Mr Kerry and the administration of the US president, Barack Obama, were seeking some kind of interim framework ahead of a full peace accord.
“Just to be absolutely clear, we are not focused on an interim deal, we are focused on a final deal,” Ms Psaki said, while adding “there of course will be a process to getting there”.
On Monday, an Israeli newspaper said that Washington was considering delaying the planned release of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners in a bid to pressure Ramallah into agreeing to its security proposals.
Several senior Palestinian officials reacted by stressing that the leadership would not accept any delay in the releases, which are due to take place at the end of the month.
Mr Abed Rabbo also rejected any delay in implementing the third phase of releases – one of the conditions agreed on that brought the two sides back to the negotiating table for the first time in nearly three years.
Last week, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said Mr Kerry was pushing to get some form of agreement on security as a way of driving the direct negotiations forward.
“The Americans hope that if they come to an understanding with [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu on the security issue, they can demand he begins to present clear positions on the border of the future Palestinian state,” the paper said.
Although Mr Kerry’s proposals have reportedly gone a long way in addressing Israel’s security demands, they have also pushed the Israeli leader in to a tight corner, commentators said.
Writing in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot, Nahum Barnea said Mr Kerry’s plan had posed Mr Netanyahu with “a serious problem”.
“The military plan ... robs Netanyahu of the immediate argument that he raised every time he was called upon to discuss drawing up the future border between Israel and Palestine: security arrangements.”
The US plan “reopens the internal debate on the 1967 lines and the fate of the settlements”, he said, suggesting that the pressure could cause Mr Netanyahu’s coalition to collapse.
Bidding to keep the peace process on track, Mr Kerry met in Washington on Monday with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat and his Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni.
Over the weekend he also held his first talks with Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman since the latter returned to his post after a corruption scandal.
* Agencies
