Israelis and Palestinians said Friday their negotiations would continue despite the pessimism caused by the continuing impasse over the key question of Jerusalem.
But time is short, given the extreme fragility of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, which no longer has a parliamentary majority.
Barak's security adviser, Danny Yatom, who is with Barak at the millennium summit in New York told Israeli radio Friday that neither side had closed the door to new negotiations, but added that "there are no grounds for optimism."
However, two Palestinian ministers were more upbeat in an interveiw with the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.
Information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo and international cooperation minister Nabil Shaath said that negotiations would begin again in the region in the coming days with direct involvement of the United States.
But there has been no apparent movement on the thorny issue of Jerusalem, which scuppered July's Camp David summit.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat firmly ruled out any suggestion of shared sovereignty over east Jerusalem in an interview broadcast by the US television network, CNN.
"Rights are rights. I can't betray my people. I can't betray the Arabs. I can't betray the Christians. I can't betray the Muslims," he said.
"And (the Israelis) have to respect all these items concerning Christianity and Islam," he said, looking tired and speaking in halting English.
Israeli officials believe that this stance rules out any possible agreement. Nevertheless, they see the fact that the Palestinians appear ready to put off the unilateral declaration of a state from the planned date of September 13 as offering a new chance for the negotiations.
The 129 members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council are due to meet Saturday and Sunday in Gaza City to decide on whether to keep the September date or to fix a new timetable.
Several senior Palestinian officials have this week openly raised the question of postponing the declaration.
But Salim al-Zaanun, chairman of the Central Council, said Friday members would accept a limited delay so long as a new deadline is fixed.
Sovereignty over east Jerusalem, and particularly control of the holy sites, is the main sticking point blocking Israelis and Palestinians from reaching a permanent solution to their conflict.
The Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their future state, while Israel considers the whole of the city its "eternal and undivided" capital.
During the Camp David summit, Barak for the first time accepted the principle of shared sovereignty over east Jerusalem, the Arab sector of the holy city, annexed since the war of June 1967.
A change in this position would be hard to accept for a large part of Israeli public opinion, and not only the right wing opposition and its religious allies.
Even the widow of the former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the 1993 interim peace accords with the Palestinians, has accused Barak of making concessions on Jerusalem that her husband would never have contemplated.
"Yitzhak is certainly turning in his grave," having heard how far Mr. Barak is ready to go, Leah Rabin told the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot in an interview published Friday.
"Yitzhak would never have agreed to compromise on the Old City and the Temple Mount, because for him Jerusalem was sacred from a strictly national and historic point of view," she said – JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
