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Change Your Life! |
It's Camp David after a quarter century |
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July 9, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) —
The future of Jerusalem looms as the potential deal-breaker in Tuesday's
last-ditch summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders at Camp David, Md.
But in preparations to
confront that volatile issue, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is
considering offering compromise concessions that would expand areas of the
city already under Arab day-to-day control. In a potential
trade-off, described by two Israeli officials close to the prime minister,
Israel would annex settlements just outside Jerusalem. But Yasser Arafat has
his eye on east Jerusalem as part of a Palestinian state, as well as its
capital. An Israeli official
said the question of Jerusalem is the one least likely to be resolved at the
summit.
Meanwhile, the White
House said President Clinton would open the summit Tuesday in a meeting with
Barak and Arafat. ``From there, they'll start meeting in different
combinations and they'll just start working the issues, and the process will
take care of itself,'' National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley
said. He said Clinton would
spend a substantial amount of time talking with the leaders individually and
collectively. ``They'll pull in experts for the specific issues that are at
stake here, and this is a process that I think they'll just define and will
create its own dynamic as it moves forward,'' Crowley said. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright will be there ``full-time,'' her spokesman, Richard
Boucher, said Friday. Albright also will
participate as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators prepare an agenda at
pre-summit talks in Washington Sunday. Israeli and
Palestinian officials said they had already discussed the possibility of a
second summit, in August. But Clinton is hoping for an overall agreement
after a few days' work. Less progress has been
made on Jerusalem than on any other issue in the negotiations leading up to
the summit, Israeli officials said. By contrast, the two sides have made
considerable headway on the question of how much land Israel will turn over
to Arafat for a state, said the officials, speaking on condition of
anonymity. Barak may not insist
on retaining the strategic Jordan Valley, provided Israel can maintain a
security presence there at least for some time, the officials said. Publicly, the
Palestinian leader is demanding transfer of virtually all of the West Bank,
Gaza and east Jerusalem — more land than Barak is prepared to relinquish.
And Barak intends to keep Jerusalem united and Israel's capital, the
officials said. Clinton, who is on the
record as supporting Palestinian ``aspirations,'' could step in. On refugees, officials
said Barak is willing to consider permitting tens of thousands of
Palestinians to settle in Israel if they have family members there. The
precedent is Israel's acceptance of 60,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs in a
program of reuniting families that was in force between Israel's founding in
1948 and the Mideast war of 1967, the officials said. Tens of thousands of
today's refugees would be absorbed in the Palestinian state, while others
would receive assistance under a worldwide funding campaign. The
Palestinians, meanwhile, are floating the idea of $40 billion being raised
through contributions. Richard N. Haass,
director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, questioned
the Mideast leaders' ability to ``negotiate compromises and sell them at
home.'' Haas, a former State
Department official, said the summit's most likely outcome is would be a
partial accord, leaving unsettled details for the final days of the Clinton
administration or its successor. |
