World

Trouble Awaits Albright

November 15, 1999 / 7:11 AM EST / AP

On the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's arrival, a bitter confrontation erupted Monday between Israel and the Palestinians over Jewish settlements, derailing month-old talks aimed at sealing a final peace between the sides.

The dispute appeared all but certain to embroil Albright, who intends to use her visit to the region to reaffirm U.S. support for the peace process, but had hoped to avoid acting as a referee in the tangle of quarrels between Israel and the Palestinians.

Spotlighting one of the most intractable of those disagreements, the Palestinians announced Monday that they would no longer participate in final status talks aimed at setting terms for Palestinian statehood -- unless Prime Minister Ehud Barak halts a burst of new construction of Jewish housing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"It is illogical to hold final status talks while at the same time Israel is continuing its settlement-building. This is unacceptable," senior Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah after a three-hour session with his Israeli counterpart.

The final status negotiations, launched with fanfare on Nov. 8, are meant to reach the broad outlines of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty by mid-February. On the table are the most contentious issues dividing the two sides: the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.

Abed Rabbo stopped short of suspending the talks outright, but said until Barak agreed to a freeze on settlement activity, settlements would be the only matter the Palestinians were willing to discuss. No date has been set for another session.

Barak's administration said it could not legally halt settlement building that was set in motion by previous governments, but that any other new construction would be concentrated in settlement blocs that Israel plans to retain.

"We will find a way to see to it that the issue of the settlements will not become an obstacle to the continuation of the negotiations," said Danny Yatom, the prime minister's security adviser.

But even as they tried to ease Palestinian anger over the settlement issue, Barak associates criticized the timing of the demand for a building freeze.

"I am sorry that the Palestinians are always creating a crisis when Secretary Albright visits the area," said Cabinet minister Haim Ramon, whose portfolio is Jerusalem affairs.

Palestinians have long sought greater U.S. involvement in the negotiating process, while Israel has generally resisted it. However, the Palestinians denied the confrontation was being staged to coincide with Albright's arrival, scheduled late Tuesday.

"Mrs. Albright has nothing to do with this," Abed Rabbo said.

Jewish settlements, which were a constant source of Israeli-Palestinian tensions during the tenure of hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have also poven an unexpectedly rancorous issue under his more dovish successor, Barak.

The new prime minister has made a few conciliatory gestures toward the Palestinians, hinting he may be willing to evacuate some remote settlements in order to accommodate their demands for swaths of contiguous territory. And last month, he sent in Israeli soldiers to drag a small band of extremist settlers off an illegal hilltop encampment.

On the whole, though, Barak has been careful to avoid antagonizing the settlers. He has expressed sympathy for the notion that Jews have a biblical claim to the West Bank, and says he finds the prospect of ceding territory to the Palestinians deeply painful.

In the latest settlement expansion announced by Israel, the government said Sunday it would build 500 additional homes in two large West Bank settlements. The Israeli watchdog group Peace Now says more new settlement housing units have won final approval under Barak during his first five months in office than the entire yearly average under Netanyahu.

Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian leadership would lose credibility with its people if it participated in negotiations with Israel while settlement building continued at such a rapid pace.

The subject is such a sore point that it has even intruded on Christmas festivities. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat criticized settlement expansion in a speech delivered at ceremonies Saturday launching the holiday season in Bethlehem, the town of Jesus' birth.

Albright may also be called upon to referee a separate dispute, over the scope of an Israeli troop pullback from 5 percent of the West Bank.

That withdrawal was to have taken place three weeks ago. The Palestinians are seeking a handover of densely populated areas; Israel says it alone will decide which land to hand over.