Netanyahu Stops Short Of Free Palestine

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to accept a Palestinian entity with broad powers but not a fully independent Palestinian state, a newspaper reported Friday.

The report indicated that Netanyahu - a staunch opponent of Palestinian statehood - was softening his hard-line stance. In the past, he has said that a demilitarized state for the Palestinians was impractical, and could never be enforced.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat flatly rejected Netanyahu’s proposal.

“He knows very well that the Palestinians are determined to achieve their independent state,” Erakat told The Associated Press.

Haaretz newspaper said that Netanyahu, in talks with foreign diplomats this week, said he would favor a semiautonomous Palestinian entity modeled after Puerto Rico or Andorra.

As a U.S. commonwealth, Puerto Rico’s foreign affairs are controlled by Washington, and its residents are U.S. citizens. There also are U.S. military installations on the island. But Puerto Ricans do not vote in national elections and do not pay federal taxes.

Andorra, a tiny enclave in the Pyrenees on the French-Spanish border, conducts its own foreign affairs, but the demilitarized state is under the security control of France and the Spanish bishop of Urgel.

Netanyahu also suggested that the entity could be called a state even if it is not fully independent. “Why can’t it be called a state without (certain) authorities?” he asked, according to Haaretz.

“Puerto Rico today is part of the United States and I don’t want the Palestinian state to be part of something that has to do with us,” Beilin said. “Andorra is a state without an army, a demilitarized state. I think the Palestinians are ready to have a demilitarized state.”

Israel and the Palestinians are struggling to agree on how to implement the interim peace accords already signed, including the longdelayed Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank city of Hebron.

Israel’s state attorney and military commanders have made contingency plans to round up militants among the Jewish settlers in Hebron ahead of a troop withdrawal, security officials and newspaper reports said Friday.

Security officials have received warnings that the extremists will try to use violence to try to scuttle the withdrawal.