Question of Palestinian state rises as talks on Hebron persist

JERUSALEM, Nov. 27 (JTA) – The controversy over a future Palestinian state rises once again. Israel’s communications minister said this week that Israel should annex the West Bank and Gaza if Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat declared the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in two years. “I will propose imposing Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the event of such an action,” Communications Minister Limor Livnat told the Knesset, using the biblical terms for the territories. Earlier this month, Arafat said he would declare a state when the interim phase of self-rule defined in the accords with Israel ends. Livnat’s remarks came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reportedly made progress in negotiations over a redeployment agreement in Hebron. They also came as tensions over Jewish settlement activity in the territories escalated. On Sunday, hundreds of Palestinian motorists blocked an intersection approaching the isolated Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. And on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid his first official visit to two West Bank Jewish settlements and said Israel would adhere to his policy of expanding existing settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Livnat, who was responding on behalf of the government during a plenum discussion Wednesday, said she was expressing her personal views in the proposal to annex the territories. But she said it was the government’s position that such a declaration by Arafat would be a total violation of the agreements signed with Israel, and would nullify the whole deal. Netanyahu has ruled out the formation of a Palestinian state. Permanent-status talks, which will determine the political entity of the Palestinians, have not resumed since the Likud leader assumed power in June. Those talks had a symbolic opening in May 1996 under the previous government. Meanwhile, in the talks on the redeployment of Israeli forces in Hebron, Israel has reportedly agreed to drop its demand for written guarantees that its troops would be able to pursue terrorists into Palestinian self-rule areas. A senior aide to Netanyahu said that instead, Israel had agreed to the same terms for troop movements in Hebron as those that apply to other West Bank and Gaza Strip areas under Palestinian self-rule. The signed accords are vague with regard to the conditions under which Israeli soldiers can chase Palestinian terrorists, after a violent incident, into areas under full Palestinian control. For their part, the Palestinians reportedly agreed to a larger buffer zone between Jewish and Arab areas of the city – a move that would also lengthen the distance between the Jewish enclave of 450 settlers in Hebron and Palestinian police armed with rifles.