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Barak to Convene Peace Team to Discuss New Initiative
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided to convene his peace team on the afternoon of November 29 to discuss new peace initiatives for reaching an agreement with the Palestinians ahead of the planned early elections next spring.
The meeting will be attended by Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, Transport Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Barak's top security adviser Danny Yatom and bureau chief Gilad Sher, and Yossi Ginossar, Barak's special peace envoy to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, officials in Barak's office said.
It will assess the chances for reviving the peace process in the wake of two months of bloody clashes between protesting Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, according to the officials.
The violence, which killed over 280 people, mostly Palestinians, and injured thousands more, has shown signs of subsiding in the past few days after both sides took some confidence-building measures.
The easing of violence and resumption of the peace talks are widely seen as the key to Barak's hopes of winning another term in the new elections.
The Israeli Knesset (parliament) on Tuesday approved in the first reading opposition bills calling for dissolving the parliament and holding early elections. The bills need to pass another two readings before becoming law.
During the Knesset debate, Barak said he agreed to early elections and the date would be announced in the coming days.
It was revealed Wednesday by Israel's Army Radio that recent secret polls commissioned by Ehud Barak's office showed that if early elections are held, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would defeat him comfortably.
But, the polls concluded, Barak's chances would dramatically improve if he has a peace agreement with the Palestinians in hand by the election day.
Netanyahu, who was defeated by Barak in general elections in 1999, has yet to announce his return to the political field.
Senior Palestinian officials reportedly said Wednesday that they have received messages from Barak that he was willing to soften his positions on certain key issues in the peace talks to facilitate a fast resumption of the negotiations.
However, Israeli Communications Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, a hawkish figure in Barak's left-wing cabinet, said Wednesday that Barak will not make further concessions to the Palestinians.
Ben Eliezer believed Israel has reached its "limit of concessions," especially on the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, which have been the deal-breaker in peace talks.
The latest peace efforts, an ill-fated summit between Barak and Arafat in the United States in July, collapsed mainly due to the two sides' significant gaps on those two issues.
Meanwhile, Israeli President Moshe Katsav, who was a member of the right-wing Likud party before last August's presidential election, warned Wednesday against making "dramatic decisions" on peace during the campaign period.
"A government certainly cannot make dramatic decisions while we are under conditions of the eve of an election," Katsav told Army Radio.
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