As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Cairo this week to continue hammering out details for implementing the self-rule accord, both sides acknowledged that the end of April was a realistic target date for concluding the talks.
Under the terms of the accord signed on the White House lawn last fall, Israel was to complete its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho by April 13.
Chief Palestine Liberation Organization negotiator Nabil Sha’ath has been critical of the Israelis in recent days, saying they were holding up the talks with various needless delays. But Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin countered this week that it was the PLO, which immediately suspended the talks following the Feb. 25 massacre of Palestinians in Hebron, which was responsible for the delays.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, during a visit to Turkey on Monday, said the new target date for signing an agreement would be the end of April, after which, he said, “I think there won’t be needed much time to implement the agreement.”
Sha’ath, in turn, said Monday the new target date was acceptable to the PLO, although he said it was his feeling the talks could be concluded before then.
As of Monday, it seemed the teams were close to agreement on almost all major issues, including timetables for the release of Palestinians still held in Israeli jails for security offenses; for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho; and for the handover of authority to the Palestinian police force.
On Monday, Israel agreed to release 2,500 Palestinian prisoners within two days of the signing of an agreement in Cairo.
One delegate to the Cairo talks has reportedly said that out of 24 articles covered in the agreement, only nine still remain to be worked out. These include the size of the Palestinian enclave in Jericho and arrangements for the establishment of a Palestinian coast guard.
In Paris, meanwhile, where talks are being held to finalize the economic policies that will govern the relationship between Israel and the nascent Palestinian authority in Gaza and Jericho, the leaders of the two teams were reporting progress in their negotiations. Finance Minister Avraham Shohat, leader of the Israeli team, and Ahmed Karia, head of the PLO’s economic division, said this week that although there are some significant differences still to be resolved, they believe that the next meeting, which will take place next week in Paris, will be the concluding round. Among the issues dealt with in the current round of the economic talks in Paris were agriculture, labor, industry, banking, insurance, direct and indirect taxes and general trade relations between Israel and the Palestinians.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
