Netanyahu Offers Quicker Peace Process Israeli Suggests Final Peace Accord By Fall, But Gets Cool Reception From Arafat

In a startling offer that may change the ground rules of Middle East negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday proposed immediate talks that would accelerate the peace process with the Palestinians toward a final resolution by September.

As Israeli bulldozers continued preparing a site for new Jewish housing in a mostly Arab district of east Jerusalem, Netanyahu sent the intriguing proposal to Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, via Jordan’s royal family, Israel Television reported Wednesday.

The offer urged Israelis and Palestinians to move directly into “final status” talks on the toughest unresolved issues between the two sides and proposed shortening the current timetable, which sets a deadline of May, 1999 for concluding the talks.

Senior aides to Arafat reacted negatively to the proposal and demanded that Netanyahu stick to a 1995 Interim Agreement that requires two further Israeli troop pull-backs in the West Bank by mid-1998.

Wednesday’s developments are evidence that both Israel and the PLO already have broken with the schedule envisioned by the Oslo peace accords. By publicly staking their competing claims to Jerusalem in a series of recent actions, both sides essentially have opened debate on complex topics that had been reserved for the final phase.

Claimed by both sides as their capital, Jerusalem is the most contentious issue of the Israel-PLO peace process and the biggest potential deal breaker.

The PLO accused Israel of nearly derailing negotiations by trying to alter the situation in Jerusalem before the final-status talks. Arafat halted negotiations when Israel started building 6,500 units of Jewish housing Tuesday in a mostly Arab district of southeastern Jerusalem captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Arafat is scheduled to meet Thursday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, where Netanyahu’s proposal presumably will be discussed.

Under a U.S.-brokered agreement reached Jan. 15, the final-status talks had been scheduled to resume Monday, but they were postponed as the two sides clashed over Jerusalem.

The 1993 Oslo accords, reached between the PLO and the previous Labor-led Israeli government, launched limited Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994. Then Israel and the PLO undertook an interim phase to expand Arab self-rule.

The thorniest, most vexing issues were to be saved for last so the sides could build trust and confidence enough to resolve them in the final-status talks. Those issues include disputed Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, final borders, Palestinian refugees and Palestinian statehood.

But when Netanyahu came to power last June at the head of a hard-line government, his ruling coalition issued guidelines opposing any substantive discussion of sharing Jerusalem or granting the Palestinians the independent state they demand.