Israel Favors Interim Pact with Palestinians: PaperThe founding of a Palestinian state with Israeli agreement and the continuation of talks between the two sides on permanent settlement topped the Israeli proposals for a temporary arrangement with the Palestinians, a local newspaper said.The proposals were submitted to Prime Minister Ehud Barak by the General Staff of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and by the Peace Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office, Ha'aretz reported Tuesday. A similar but less detailed proposal on the so-called temporary arrangement with the Palestinians, or interim pact, was also formulated by the National Security Council, the paper said. The paper quoted a political source as saying that the main points of the IDF proposals include that Israel will recognize a Palestinian state and will conduct negotiations with it on demarcating the final borders. The arrangement will have a duration of a year and a half or two years and will not be defined as an "interim settlement", but rather a transitional arrangement designed to define relations in the phase leading from Palestinian autonomy to statehood, said the proposals. Israel will continue to supervise the external border crossings to Jordan and Egypt and the Palestinian airport in Gaza to prevent anyone who enters the Palestinian territories from crossing into Israel without inspection, the proposals said. The proposals went on to say that the existing economic, security and regional cooperation arrangements, as were set in the interim agreements, will remain valid and the Palestinians will receive another slice of the West Bank as part of the IDF's third redeployment. The source said that during the security cabinet meeting on Sunday, Barak told the ministers that he prefers first to exhaust the possibility of attaining a comprehensive framework agreement, which will refer to all the issues still outstanding with the Palestinians. But Barak did not rule out the proposals for a temporary or partial agreement. The temporary arrangement may in the last analysis be called a " framework agreement" and serve as the first stage of the permanent settlement with the Palestinians, the source added. |
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