Israel rejects Palestinian peace talks

Israel’s new foreign minister got off to a provocative start Wednesday by rejecting peace negotiations started by the Bush administration to establish the contours of a Palestinian state.

Avigdor Lieberman said Israel’s new government will suspend negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on so-called “final-status” issues - the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and the city of Jerusalem - until the Palestinians take verifiable steps to end attacks against Israelis.

With the statement, the new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed the policy of its predecessor, led by Ehud Olmert, which had been quietly attempting to negotiate a final settlement of the conflict with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the past 14 months.

The shift could cause problems with the Obama administration, which has set as a priority a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“We are committed to working vigorously for this two-state solution as we believe it to be in our national security interest and in the security interest of Israel and the region,” White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said.

“We look forward to working with the new Israeli government and understand that we will have frank discussions, and that these discussions will be based on an underlying shared commitment to Israel and its security,” he said.

Mr. Lieberman said his government will not be bound by agreements reached at a 2007 summit of Israeli and Arab leaders in Annapolis and signaled skepticism about the peace process in general.

“Sixteen years have passed since [the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians], and I do not see that we are any closer to a permanent settlement. There is one document that binds us, and it is not the Annapolis conference. That has no validity,” he said.

Mr. Lieberman said Israel would abide by an earlier George W. Bush administration product: the April 2003 “Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” which laid out a three-phase, conditioned process to create a Palestinian state.

The so-called road map required Israel to freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza but also demanded that the Palestinian Authority change its constitution, end support for terrorism and establish an effective government before it could get an independent state.

The road map’s deadline for the creation of that state was 2005. One reason President Bush changed course in 2007 was because the deadline had passed and the militant group Hamas had taken control of the Gaza Strip in June of that year.

Mr. Lieberman made clear that it would be a long time, in his view, before political negotiations could resume.

“We will therefore act exactly according to that document, the road map. … I will never agree to our waiving all the clauses - I believe there are 48 of them - and going directly to the last clause, negotiations on a permanent settlement,” Mr. Lieberman said.

The comments are likely to add to the controversy about Mr. Lieberman, who has called for all Israelis to take a loyalty oath and suggested that if a Palestinian state is created, it should include parts of Israel with predominantly Arab populations.

However, there are also few defenders of the so-called Annapolis process, which former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said clarified many final-status issues but failed to reach any agreements.

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