RAMALLAH: The Palestinian leadership ruled out further peace talks with Israel as long as it continued settlement construction in the occupied territories.
The decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saturday strengthened president Mahmoud Abbas, who has threatened to shun US-backed talks relaunched a month ago over the recent resumption of building in the West Bank.
However, Abbas has said he would not make a final decision on the talks until after meeting Arab foreign ministers in Libya on Friday, giving US mediators another few days to try to strike a compromise.
"The resumption of negotiations requires tangible steps from Israel and the international community beginning with a halt of settlement activity," the PLO said in a statement.
"We have alternatives (to the negotiations) which we will announce soon," it said after holding a special meeting attended by Abbas and members of his Fatah movement’s Central Committee. It did not provide further details.
"The Palestinian leadership holds the Israeli government responsible for foiling the international efforts and the peace process in the region because it is determined to combine negotiations with settlements," it added.
The PLO, a Fatah-dominated umbrella group headed by Abbas that includes most Palestinian factions but not the militant Hamas, is the Palestinians’ sole international representative.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted by urging Abbas "to continue the peace talks without a break with the aim of reaching a historic accord in a year," a statement from his office said.
"For 17 years the Palestinians negotiated while construction continued" in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, he added, and expressed the hope "that they will not now turn their backs on peace."
Fatah, meanwhile, appeared to have adopted an even harder line on the negotiations, with one member of the Central Committee suggesting the international community reconsider Israel’s existence.
"The ball is now in the court of the international community to stop the unilateral aggression on Palestinian lands on which a Palestinian state must be established," Jibril Rajub told reporters.
"If the world cannot do that, then it should re-examine the legitimacy of the continued existence of the state of Israel, which was established with an international birth certificate."
The Arab League Follow-up Committee on the peace talks will meet to form its own position on Friday in the Libyan city of Sirte, officials in Cairo said, after the meeting was twice postponed.
Abbas — who previously secured the endorsement of the group of Arab foreign ministers for launching indirect peace talks and then again for upgrading to direct talks — plans to announce his decision after the meeting.
"We want the Arab Follow-up Committee to support the Palestinian position on the negotiations," Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and member of the negotiating team, told AFP after Saturday’s meeting.
The Palestinian leader had frequently threatened to walk out of the direct negotiations launched exactly one month ago if Israel allowed a 10-month moratorium on new West Bank settler homes to expire on September 26.
Netanyahu allowed the restrictions to end despite US pressure, but has said he will restrain settlement construction and repeatedly urged the Palestinians to continue the talks.
US envoy George Mitchell held meetings with both sides last week before heading for meetings with Arab leaders in a bid to keep the peace talks alive. He arrived in Cairo on Saturday after holding talks in Qatar, and on Sunday is set to be in Amman.
"Peace in the region and an independent viable state for the Palestinian people realistically will be achieved through direct negotiations between both parties," Mitchell said Saturday.
"Both parties the Israelis and the Palestinians have asked us to continue our discussions with them and with other interested governments on how best to achieve this goal," Mitchell added.
The Palestinians have long viewed the presence of some 500,000 Israelis in more than 120 settlements across the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem as a major obstacle to the establishment of a viable state.
The international community considers all settlements illegal.
Meanwhile, An Israeli border guard on Sunday killed a Palestinian who tried to grab his gun when detained while trying to cross into east Jerusalem from the West Bank, a police official said.
The man was apprehended along with a group of Palestinians before he was shot and killed by the border guard, the police source said on condition of anonymity.
His neighbours later identified him as Ezzedine Kawasba, 38, a father of five from a small village outside the West Bank town of Hebron. They said he was a laborer who worked in Israel illegally.
Thousands of Palestinians sneak into Israel each day from the West Bank in search of work despite Israel’s separation barrier; a network of walls and fences that snakes across the territory and through annexed east Jerusalem.
On September 22, clashes erupted in Jerusalem after a Jewish settlement guard shot dead a Palestinian during a confrontation in a tense neighborhood in the annexed Arab eastern part of the city.
Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community. It views the entire city as its "eternal, undivided" capital.
The Palestinians have demanded east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the city’s future status remains one of the most intractable issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
