The Palestine Liberation Organisation effectively rejected on Thursday a proposal by the European Union, the United States and Russia to resume suspended peace negotiations with Israel next month without precondition. The PLO executive committee, meeting in Ramallah, noted the proposal but said, as expected, that Israel must halt all settlement building in the occupied West Bank before they will restart talks, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has insisted.
Israel has made clear it is not ready to do that. "The Palestinian leadership stresses clearly that it cannot accept holding negotiations that lack the minimum limits of responsibility and seriousness amid the continuation of settlements and stealing of land," said top PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo.
Abbas leads both the Palestinian Authority, set up to administer Palestinian territories under interim peace agreements, and the PLO, the body which negotiates with Israel. On Friday, Abbas formally asked the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move opposed by Israel and the United States who say only a negotiated peace can end the 63-year-old Middle East conflict and create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The proposal for breaking the deadlock had little chance. Abbas's diplomatic initiative has set the Palestinians on a new course to circumvent a peace process that he says has achieved nothing over the past 18 years, and Abbas is unlikely to abandon it unless Israel agreed to his terms for talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging Abbas to return to negotiations without preconditions. He insists that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a "Jewish state", which they refuse to do. The European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States - known as the Quartet - tried for months but failed to draft "terms of reference" that might find a compromise and breathe life into peace talks that collapsed nearly a year ago.
Instead, to try to defuse a clash over the Palestinians' UN initiative, and a US veto of it, they issued a statement calling for preparatory talks in a month, substantive proposals from both sides on borders and security within three months, and a peace deal by the end of 2012.
Abed Rabbo did not expressly reject the Quartet proposal. He told reporters the PLO had "noted" it and said it included some "encouraging items", such as its reference to the 1967 borders - the lines that existed before occupation of the lands, which the Palestinians want to be the basis of their state.
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