Members of the Israeli opposition and Palestinian officials have finalized a draft version of the so-called Swiss initiative, and are inclined to ink the memorandum which sets out a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the coming weeks.
The negotiating teams, which included former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin, Labor MPs Avraham Burg and Amram Mitzna and Meretz MP Haim Oron on the Israeli side and Yasser Abed Rabbo and Nabil Qassis on the Palestinian side, had been holding talks in Jordan since Thursday. The signing of the declaration took place at a Red Sea resort early Sunday at the end of three days of deliberations between the two sides.
"The document provides solutions to final settlement issues such as the status of Arab East Jerusalem, frontiers, the establishment of a Palestinian state and the right of returning home of Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave Palestine when Israel was founded in 1948," deputy Palestinian ambassador in Jordan Atallah Khairi said.
The document was prepared over the course of a year by Beilin and Abed Rabbo, with the assistance of several professionals, and is intended to draft a permanent peace agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has given his blessing to the dialogue.
Meanwhile, Israel's Health Minister Dan Naveh (Likud) described the Belin-Abed Rabbo agreement as a phenomenon
"reeking of a bad odor."
"The opposition is negotiating behind the government's back with the Palestinians, while we are in a serious conflict with them, in a war against Palestinian terror, which is directed and encouraged by some of the people with whom the left-wing officials have met," Naveh said.
"It is not the opposition's job to hold talks, it is the government's job, and there are reasons for the government to avoid negotiations today with these people, Arafat's people, who have been behind the campaign of murder of terror over the past three years," Naveh said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
