DECLARING THERE is little chance for renewing Middle East peace talks, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned that any move by the Palestinians to seek United Nations endorsement for an independent state will render existing agreements null and void.
Mr Lieberman told European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, during talks in Jerusalem yesterday, that Israel would renounce the Oslo peace agreements signed with the Palestinians in the 1990s if they went ahead with plans to ask the UN in September to recognise a Palestinian state.
“The unilateral move at the UN is the end of the Oslo accords and would be a violation of all agreements that we have signed until now,” he said. “Israel would not be obligated to the agreements that it has signed with the Palestinians over the past 18 years.”
Mrs Ashton, who met Palestinian leaders last night and meets Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu tomorrow, came to the region in an effort to get the sides to renew negotiations which were broken off by the Palestinians last September when Israel refused to extend a West Bank settlement freeze.
“We are well aware that September is fast approaching,” she said in a statement after the talks.
“With the events of the Arab spring and following President Obama’s speech, it is more urgent than ever to engage in meaningful negotiations and move the peace process forward.”
Before arriving, Mrs Ashton said she was pushing for an urgent meeting of the Middle East quartet – the US, the EU, Russia and the UN – to help relaunch negotiations. Diplomatic sources in Brussels said she hoped for a quartet meeting in Washington, by early next month at the latest.
Mr Lieberman, who earlier this week termed EU peace efforts “naive”, said Israel was willing to renew bilateral negotiations at any time, but “the ball was in the Palestinian court”. However, he said the chances of renewing negotiations were slim as Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was “interested in conflict not an agreement”.
Israel’s president Shimon Peres, a renowned dove and an architect of the Oslo peace accords, sounded particularly pessimistic this week over peace prospects.
The Ha’aretz newspaper quoted Mr Peres as telling guests that Israel was “doomed” unless peace talks resumed in the near future.
“I’m concerned that Israel will become a binational state, what is happening now is total foot-dragging,” Mr Peres was quoted as saying. “We’re about to crash into the wall. We’re galloping at full speed toward a situation where Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state.”
In what appeared to be criticism of the stance adopted by Mr Netanyahu, Mr Peres warned that Israel was in danger of losing international support.
“Whoever accepts the basic principle of the 1967 lines will receive international support from the world,” he said. “Whoever rejects it will lose the world.”