Israeli Legislator Meets Palestinian Security OfficialAvshalom Vilan, Knesset (parliament) member from Israel's left-wing Meretz Party, held a secret meeting Saturday night with Palestinian Preventive Security Force chief Gabril Rajoub, Israel Radio said Sunday.The meeting took place in the West Bank town of Ramallah with the prior approval of Israeli government officials and was intended to help find ways to put an end to the ongoing clashes, which have so far claimed more than 140 lives, mostly Palestinians. Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Adbel Rahman also attended the meeting. Senior Palestinian officials told Israel Radio that they wanted a meeting with Vilan because of his excellent ties with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as well as his ability to present as an honest broker to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Among the issues discussed in the meeting was the PNA's interest in learning about Barak's "unilateral separation" plans and about Israel's possible response to a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians. Barak has considered various "unilateral separation" plans to cope with a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood. Some of the plans would reportedly be based on the final-status borders Israel proposed at the July Camp David summit in the United States, where Barak offered the Palestinians some 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat has rejected a merely geographic or economic separation by the Israelis but welcomed a political separation based on the borders prior to the 1967 Middle East War, in which Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza as well as East Jerusalem. The Palestinians have been striving to build an independent state on the whole areas of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. |
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