Top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reached a general outline of a peace deal five years ago, but the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin prevented the two sides from building on that early success, according to a Newsweek report due out on newsstands Monday.
The negotiators -- Yossi Beilin of Israel and Abu Mazen of the Palestine Liberation Organization -- agreed, in a secret meeting, to recognize each other's nations in perpetuity and to share Jerusalem as the capital of both nations, the magazine reported.
They also worked out an elaborate security arrangement designed to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict from resuming, according to the report.
"The Government of Israel shall extend its recognition to the Independent State of Palestine within agreed and secure borders with its capital al-Quds," the blueprint said, according to Newsweek. "Simultaneously, the State of Palestine shall extend its recognition to the State of Israel within agreed and secure border with the capital Yerushalayim."
Al-Quds is the Arab name for Jerusalem.
However, Rabin never had a chance to study the deal because he was assassinated shortly before it reached his desk, the report said.
The magazine quotes a US official as saying US President Bill Clinton considered the Beilin-Abu Mazen draft as perhaps the "core idea" at Camp David peace talks last July. The talks, however, failed to produce an accord – WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
