The "Geneva Understandings" - a draft memorandum for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement formulated by members of the Israeli opposition and Palestinian officials - includes the Palestinians relinquishing their claim to a "right of return" to areas inside the State of Israel.

Under the terms of the
agreement, the Palestinians
would in return be granted
sovereignty over the Temple
Mount, and the area would be
monitored by international
bodies. The Jewish Quarter of
the Old City of Jerusalem, as
well as the Western Wall, would
remain under Israeli
sovereignty.

Members of the Israeli delegation upon returning
Sunday from talks with the Palestinians in
Amman, Jordan said that the initiative will be
released and signed during an international
conference to be held in Geneva soon.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Channel Two on
Sunday that the initiative is hampering the
ability to move forward in negotiations towards
a practical peace agreement. According to a
Channel Two report, Sharon has learned from
intelligence sources that Palestinian Prime
Minister Ahmed Qureia and his government intend
to adopt the Geneva understandings.

Labor MK Amram Mitzna, who took part in the
talks, told Israel Radio that maps were drawn
up according to which Israel would withdraw to
the 1967 Green Line border, while three
settlement blocs containing three quarters of
the settlers in the territories would remain
under Israeli rule.

According to Mitzna, Marwan Barghouti, the
Tanzim chief standing trial in Israel for
alleged murder, was partly involved in the
initiative, while Palestinian Authority
Chairman Yasser Arafat and Palestinian Prime
Minister Ahmed Qureia were aware of it.

The negotiating teams, which included former
minister Yossi Beilin, Labor MKs Avraham Burg
and Amram Mitzna and Meretz MK Haim Oron on the
Israeli side and Yasser Abed Rabbo and Nabil
Qassis on the Palestinian side, began their
talks in Amman on Thursday. The draft was
finalized Sunday and the signing ceremony is to
take place in Geneva in several weeks time.

"The document provides solutions to final
settlement issues such as the status of Arab
East Jerusalem, frontiers, the establishment of
a Palestinian state and the right of returning
home of Palestinian refugees who were forced to
leave Palestine when Israel was founded in
1948," said the deputy Palestinian ambassador
to Jordan, Atallah Khairi.

Although the Jordanian government said that it
"had nothing to do with the meeting," reliable
sources said that the Israeli-Palestinian talks
were attended by Jordanian Foreign Minister
Marwan Muasher and other senior Foreign
Ministry officials.

The document was prepared over the course of a
year by Beilin and Abed Rabbo, with the
assistance of several professionals, and is
intended to draft a permanent peace agreement
to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat
has given his blessing to the dialogue.

The draft is based on the Taba agreements that
were drafted during the end of Ehud Barak's
term as prime minister in 1999, and former U.S.
president Bill Clinton's plan for the division
of Jerusalem between Israel and the
Palestinians, which included providing the
right of return for Palestinians in
humanitarian cases.

Labor MK Ephraim Sneh supported the dialogue
between the Israelis and Palestinians, but
criticized the level of details explored by the
agreement.

"Any talks between Israel and the Palestinians,
especially between senior officials, is
welcome. But it is undesired to agree on issues
that are overly detailed, that will become the
starting point for the Palestinians in future
negotiations," Sneh said Thursday.

Meretz MK Yossi Sarid told Israel Radio on
Friday that he had participated in the
discussions on the draft, but could not leave
for Jordan to attend the signing ceremony for
personal reasons.

Sarid would not provide details of the contents
of the agreement, but said that there was no
intention to keep the draft secret. He said
that the Israeli and Palestinian "peace
coalition" has been meeting continuously.

"We believe in these meetings, we think that
there is something to talk about and someone to
talks too, perhaps today more than ever, and it
is a shame that the government won't talk, just
shoot," Sarid said.

"These meetings were not carried out in an
underground manner or in the dark," Sarid said,
referring to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
accusations earlier this week that the Labor
and the left were cooperating with the
Palestinians "behind the back of the
government."

Sarid explained that the meetings had to be
coordinated with the security establishment.

"I don't understand why the prime minister was
angered by the meeting near the Dead Sea...
Perhaps Sharon is scared that a terrible secret
would come out: that there is someone to talk
and something to talk about, and a significant
degree of goodwill on the part of the second
party, and that this is a time in which calm,
even relative calm can be achieved... We,
unlike him, are not afraid."

Health Minister Dan Naveh (Likud) dismissed the
Belin-Abed Rabbo agreement as a document that
"reeked of a bad odor."

"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,"
Naveh said.

"It is not the opposition's job to hold talks,
it is the government's job, and there are
reasons for the government to avoid
negotiations today with these people, Arafat's
people, who have been behind the campaign of
murder of terror over the past three years,"
Naveh said.

"Those people, Sarid, Beilin and the others,
were the architects of the Oslo agreements ten
years ago, which in my opinion the agreement
that brought this terrible catastrophe on us,"
he added.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/348710.html


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=348803&contrassID=1

L’opposizione laburista riesce a ottenere un piano di pace


Israeliani-palestinesi Accordo fra «colombe»

Ma Sharon li bolla come «irresponsabili»


DAL NOSTRO INVIATO
GERUSALEMME - Il «golpe» pacifista ha mandato il primo ministro Ariel Sharon su tutte le furie. Ma dall'Egitto, dove sta depositando la bozza dell'accordo con i palestinesi, l'ex ministro israeliano Yossi Beilin, laburista, fa sapere al premier che è disposto a cedere al governo il «brevetto» sull'intesa raggiunta dalle colombe delle due parti, per mettere fine all'Intifada e all'occupazione dei territori: «Quel che volevamo dimostrare è ormai evidente: un'intesa è possibile. Ma, soprattutto, non è vero che mancavano gli interlocutori. E infatti noi li abbiamo trovati». Uri Zaki, portavoce a Gerusalemme di Yossi Beilin, evita di inasprire i toni della discussione, che vede anche il suo ex premier, Ehud Barak, schierato con la destra: «Sharon si è arrabbiato, perché sono stati smantellati gli alibi del governo. E cioè che, dopo il rifiuto a Camp David del 90 per cento dei territori, i palestinesi volessero soltanto cancellare Israele dalle mappe con il terrorismo. L'Accordo svizzero dimostra che non è così».
Da più di due anni, e non in gran segreto, i laburisti (poi sconfitti alle elezioni dello scorso anno) e una delegazione di dirigenti palestinesi si sono dati appuntamento in mezzo mondo per sciogliere i nodi più intricati del conflitto arabo-israeliano: il diritto al ritorno di 3 milioni e 600 mila profughi palestinesi, la sovranità sul Monte del Tempio, sacro anche ai musulmani per la Moschea Al Aqsa, la divisione di Gerusalemme e altre questioni su cui le diplomazie mondiali si arrovellano invano da decenni.
Proprio nel momento in cui Sharon sta per riuscire a convincere gli Stati Uniti che Arafat è l'ostacolo da eliminare, e che con l'Autorità palestinese non c'è possibilità di dialogo, spunta l'opposizione israeliana con un piano di pace già bell'e pronto da firmare.
I negoziatori palestinesi, guidati dall'ex ministro Yasser Abed Rabbo, avrebbero ceduto sul diritto al ritorno dei profughi nelle terre ormai israeliane. In cambio chiedono, e nell'intesa virtuale ottengono, la giurisdizione sulla spianata delle moschee, nella città vecchia, terzo luogo sacro dell'Islam nel mondo, dopo la Mecca e la Medina. Gerusalemme sarebbe controllata da una forza internazionale e la gran parte delle colonie ebraiche dovrebbero lasciare i territori occupati, con l'eccezione di Ma'aleh Adumim ed Efrat. Secondo il portavoce di Yossi Beilin si è ottemperato così all'esigenza primaria di Israele: «Rimanere un Paese ebraico e democratico, disinnescando la bomba della crescita demografica araba. I palestinesi hanno capito che pagheranno un prezzo alto, rinunciando al diritto al ritorno, ma sono stati abbastanza pragmatici da accettarlo».
Il patto non ha alcuna possibilità di applicazione pratica. L'ex ministro Yossi Beilin, il leader laburista Amram Mitzna (sconfitto alle elezioni), lo scrittore Amos Oz e gli altri componenti della delegazione israeliana sono stati bollati come «traditori» dalla destra e dallo stesso Sharon che li accusa di «irresponsabilità». Arafat, invece, non ha smentito i negoziatori palestinesi, tra cui figurano due capi tanzim (gruppo affiliato ad Al Fatah), Kadoura Fares e Mohammed Khourani, uomini di Marwan Barghouti, attualmente incarcerato e sotto processo in Israele.

Elisabetta Rosaspina



© Corriere della Sera

Analysis / The left moves to fill the vacuum

The Israeli left has recently seized the
political-diplomatic initiative, which had been
firmly in the right's hands during three years of
war with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and his ministers have lost control over
the public debate, and over the last few weeks,
they have been busy trying to fend off moves by
the left, from the letter by pilots who refuse to
participate in targeted killings in the
territories to the Geneva Accords.


The diplomatic vacuum created by
the freeze on American
involvement in the process and
the shelving of the road map
peace plan, combined with the
government's ongoing failure to
eliminate Palestinian terror,
provided a convenient
background for Yossi Beilin's
comeback and the public
prominence that has been given to the Geneva
Accords. Sharon unintentionally served as
Beilin's public relations agent by launching a
blistering attack against the left's talks with
the Palestinians even before the details were
made public. The prime minister thus played the
role of the "teaser" that precedes a major
advertising blitz.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom tried yesterday
to halt the political and media erosion,
calling the Geneva document "an unhatched egg"
laid by "the lunatic fringe." But his words
were swallowed up in the waves of accusations
of sabotage from the right and the filing of a
complaint to the police against the document's
drafters - both of which only contributed to
the plan's star billing on the evening
television news.

Beilin and his friends from the Economic
Cooperation Foundation, who conducted the talks
with Yasser Abed Rabbo and his colleagues on
the Palestinian side, are hoping for a fifth
replay of their previous successes in setting
Israel's diplomatic agenda. The method has not
changed: formulate a draft agreement and bring
it to the decision-makers at the appropriate
moment, so that it will become official policy.
That is what they did in Oslo in 1993, in their
talks with Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on a draft
of a permanent-status agreement in 1995 (which,
five years later, became the basis for the
Barak-Clinton plan), in preparation for the Wye
Agreement in 1998, and in the proposal for a
unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon.

The current effort received unexpected
assistance from Alexis Keller, a professor of
the philosophy of law at the University of
Geneva with Jewish roots whose wife is of
Lebanese origin. Keller organized an academic
conference two years ago, and ever since he has
been enthusiastically involved in trying to
mediate between Israelis and Palestinians. Some
of the negotiating sessions took place at his
family villa, and his lobbying persuaded the
Swiss government to officially sponsor the
project. The Swiss foreign minister, Micheline
Calmy-Rey, whose office financed part of the
project, met with Foreign Minister Shalom on
August 11. But government sources in Jerusalem
said she did not mention her involvement in the
talks between the Israeli left and Fatah
representatives.

The Israeli participants insisted that this
time, the talks should lead to a public
agreement that would be signed in a public
ceremony. This demand stemmed from Beilin's
experience with his 1995 agreement with Abu
Mazen - who repudiated the document after it
was published.

The Geneva Accords are an effort to formulate a
complete final-status agreement, without
Sharon's long-term interim agreements. The
accompanying letter, which was signed this past
Sunday, attempts to reconcile the document with
the road map, presenting it as a draft for the
final phase of that peace plan, which is due to
end in 2005. The Beilin-Abed Rabbo
understandings state that Israel's withdrawal
from the territories will be completed within
30 months, during which time the settlements
will be dismantled, but the Israel Defense
Forces will be allowed to deploy in the Jordan
Valley for an additional three years. The
establishment of a Palestinian state and the
opening of diplomatic relations will occur as
soon as the agreement is signed.

Israelis who participated in the initiative said
that their principal achievement was in the
article dealing with the refugees. They said
the Palestinians agreed that any resettlement
of refugees in Israeli territory would require
Israel's consent - something they had never
been willing to accept in the past. They also
agreed to recognize Israel as "the Jewish
people's national home" in two places in the
document.

With regard to the border, the Israelis conceded
Ariel, both on the grounds that it would be
hard to defend and because it would be hard to
justify inserting an Israeli "finger" 15 to 18
kilometers long into the heart of the
Palestinian state. In exchange, the
Palestinians agreed that Israel could annex a
strip just east of the Green Line, from Elkana
southward, to expand the territorial defenses
of Ben-Gurion Airport. That is the only place
in which the border was determined by security
rather than demographic considerations, at the
insistence of the "security-oriented" members
of the Israeli team.

The Palestinians also agreed that Israel could
annex Givat Ze'ev, Ma'aleh Adumim and the
Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, except
for Har Homa, which they insisted be
dismantled. They explained that it was hard
enough for them to swallow the demographic
division of Jerusalem laid down by the Clinton
plan, but they certainly could not accept
construction that had taken place after
Clinton's plan was published. In the end, more
than half of the West Bank settlers will find
themselves annexed to Israel; the remainder
will evacuated, as will all of the Gaza
settlers.

As compensation for the annexation of these
settlements and the strip around Ben-Gurion
Airport, Israel will give the Palestinians
lands adjacent to the Gaza Strip. No Israeli
community in the Negev will be dismantled, but
the kibbutzim and moshavim in the area will
have to give up some of their fields.

From Sharon's perspective, none of these ideas
is acceptable, even as a basis for discussion.
The ninth reservation that Israel submitted to
the road map states: "There will be no
involvement with issues pertaining to the final
settlement."
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/349881.html

The draft text of the Geneva Accords, the
controversial document drafted by former senior
Israeli and Palestinian officials, limits
Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount by
stating that in light of the sanctity of the site
and its religious and cultural significance to the
Jewish people, there will be no archaeological
digs or construction without the consent of both
sides.


In the section on the Old City
of Jerusalem, the text states
that an international force
stationed permanently at the
site would be responsible for
supervising implementation of
this article. This clause is
meant to put an end to the
years of mutual accusations of
unilateral construction and
excavation on the Mount.

The article adds that in light of the site's
universal significance, visitors will be
allowed to enter without discrimination,
subject to prayer and security arrangements.

(Click here for main points of accords)

As more details of the alternative agreement
came to light, Israel Radio reported Wednesday
that the government is furious with Switzerland
over its sponsorship of the Geneva Accord.

The Swiss foreign ministry Wednesday summoned
Israel's ambassador to Bern, Aviv Shiron, to
discuss the peace plan, the radio said.

It also quoted the East Jerusalem Al Quds
newspaper as having reported that the
principles of the document were largely agreed
upon during a meeting in Britain hosted by
Prime Minister Tony Blair six months ago.

Under the Accord, The Mount would be transferred
to the Palestinians only 30 months after the
agreement is signed. This waiting period is
apparently meant to enable both sides to
examine the sincerity of the other's
implementation efforts and to encourage the
Palestinians to fulfill their other commitments
(such as fighting terrorism) in order to ensure
that the site will indeed be transferred to
them.

According to the agreement, the Muslim, Armenian
and Christian quarters of the Old City would be
Palestinian, while the Jewish quarter would
remain Israeli. There would be special
arrangements to allow Israelis to pass through
the Armenian quarter on their way to the Jewish
quarter.

The entire Old City would be open: The borders
between the quarters would be marked, but they
would not be separated by physical barriers. In
other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, Jewish
and Arab areas would be separated by physical
barriers, but the two parties would consider
removing them after three years.

In an emergency, either side would be able to
suspend the above arrangements and physically
close off the quarter(s) under its control
(with the exception of the Armenian quarter)
for one week.

Law and order in the Old City would be
maintained by a special international force
that would include Israeli and Palestinian
policemen.

The Palestinians would have sovereignty over
Damascus Gate, Lions Gate and New Gate, while
Israel would retain sovereignty over Dung Gate
and Zion Gate. Jaffa Gate would also be under
Palestinian sovereignty, but Israel would
operate the border crossing - an arrangement
meant to ensure an orderly flow of traffic in
both directions.

Israel would manage and provide security for the
Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and
would also be responsible for security on the
main road leading from Jaffa Gate to Zion Gate
and from there to the Mount of Olives.

Visas would be needed to cross from Israeli to
Palestinian Jerusalem or vice versa. Both the
Israeli and the Palestinian sections of the
city would be territorially contiguous, without
enclaves.

Israel said furious over Swiss involvement in
Accord
Israel radio quoted unnamed senior government
officials Wednesday as saying that the Swiss
government cannot officially sanction or host
such an initiative.

Switzerland said Monday that that it had been
helping Israeli and Palestinian politicians in
their effort to draw up an alternative peace
plan for the Middle East for the past two years.
Swiss officials voiced hope that the Quartet
would endorse and foster the new initiative,
and appealed for wider international support.

Israeli opposition politicians, including
justice minister Yossi Beilin, and prominent
Palestinians including Yasser Abed Rabbo, a
former minister, met in the Jordanian capital
over the weekend to draft the peace pact.

The Israeli and Palestinian teams hope to sign a
completed Geneva Accord text on November 4, the
eighth anniversary of the assassination of
then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

"Switzerland provided logisitical and financial
help," Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline
Calmy-Rey told journalists in Bern on Monday,
adding that the effort had reached its "high
point" so far in Amman. "It's a risky
investment," she said.

"This agreement could enter into history if it
is applied. It fits into phase three of the
road map," said Urs Ziswiler, a senior adviser
to the
Swiss foreign minister who attended the
meetings.

"We hope the quartet will support this
initiative," Ziswiler said, referring to the
United States, the European Union, Russia and
the United Nations, joint sponsors of the
faltering road map peace plane.

The Bush administration Tuesday distanced itself
from the Geneva Accord, with State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher stressing that the
U.S. is committed to the road map and that it
is the only plan the U.S. currently intends to
promote.

Speaking at his daily press briefing, Boucher
said that the Geneva Accord was a private
initiative in which the U.S. was not involved.
The U.S., he said, remains committed to
pursuing President George W. Bush's vision of
two states for two peoples, but it believes
that the proper way to do this is via the road
map.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/349932.html