Israelis To Negotiate With Plo On Self-Rule, Troop Withdrawal

Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization negotiators will go into “Camp David-style seclusion” in Italy this week to try to wrap up a deal on expanding Palestinian self-rule, an Israeli official said Sunday.

Negotiators face a July 25 deadline for signing an accord on an Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank and for Palestinian elections. But a top Palestinian negotiator warned that the two sides may miss the deadline.

Israel Radio said the two chief negotiators, Israel’s Uri Savir and the PLO’s Ahmed Qureia, are expected to meet in Italy on Wednesday.

“The idea is to seclude everyone as much as possible from day-to-day business,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Danny Shek said.

“It’s a Camp David-style seclusion where people are completely dedicated to finishing up the agreement,” Shek said, referring to the 1978 peace talks in which then-President Jimmy Carter kept the leaders of Egypt and Israel at his weekend retreat at Camp David for almost two weeks until they struck a peace deal.

In an interview in Qatar’s Arrayah newspaper on Sunday, Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian planning minister, said an agreement cannot be reached unless Israel frees some 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners or agrees to a timetable for their release.

Israel released about 4,500 Arab political prisoners after it signed a peace treaty with the PLO in 1993. Under the first stage of the treaty, Gaza and the West Bank area of Jericho became autonomous.

Negotiators have missed a July 1 deadline for the second and final stage of the peace agreement, largely because of differences over the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

Israel has said that it would agree to pull out of several Palestinian towns in the West Bank this fall before Palestinian elections. Israel’s army would remain in rural areas and Jewish settlements but would hand over control during a two-year period.

Complicating the task is the presence of 135,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, where there are 1 million Palestinians. Only 5,000 settlers live in Gaza.

Settlers fear they will be exposed to attack by Islamic militants who have killed scores of Israelis over the past year in an effort to scuttle the peace process.