The Palestinian Central Council has given its backing to President Yasser Arafat's plan to declare an independent Palestinian state by September 13th, regardless of whether a final peace accord is reached with Israel.
The 129-member council, the PLO's mini-parliament, made the declaration late yesterday after a two-day meeting in Gaza. In a statement, it said September 13th, the deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, would be the date of such a declaration.
"[The PCC] announces to the Palestinian people, the Arab nations and to the world nations its determination . . . to declare a Palestinian independent state with holy Jerusalem as its capital . . . by the end of the interim period, stated and which finishes on September 13th, 2000," the statement said.
A senior Palestinian official said, however, the date was flexible.
The Israeli government is threatening to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if the Palestinians move ahead unilaterally.
Mr Arafat would ideally like to establish Palestine with full Israeli backing - as the culmination of a peace process that would also see Israel withdrawing from all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem territory that it captured in the 1967 war. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, has made clear that Israel has no intention of relinquishing 100 per cent of the territory. Rather, it wants to hold on to between 5 and 20 per cent of the West Bank, including areas heavily populated by Jewish settlers, and to expand Israeli sovereignty to such areas.
The Clinton administration, which has devoted unprecedented attention to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking in recent years, has been striving to find a formula to bridge this and other differences - over rights for Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, water allocations and more - ahead of the mid-September date set as a deadline for a permanent agreement.
To that end, President Clinton is considering inviting - or, more accurately, summoning - Mr Barak and Mr Arafat to the US for summit talks later this month. Mr Barak is more than willing to fly out. Mr Arafat argues that the gap between the parties' positions is still too wide.
Ominously, both sides now appear to be preparing for violence if no accord is forthcoming. The Palestinian Minister of Communications, Mr Imad Faluji, warned in Gaza yesterday of a "heavy response" should Israel try to frustrate Palestinian independence moves. The Israeli army is said to be drawing up contingency plans for a possible outbreak of violence in the territories. And some Jewish settler leaders are also drawing up what they say are contingency plans for their own defence.
His popularity slipping by the week, Mr Barak is anxious for progress on the Palestinian front. As of yesterday, though, he was locked in dispute over controversial new domestic legislation, which he is backing over objections from within his own party, and which would formally exempt many ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service - an issue of immense sensitivity in Israel.