[The interview, a rarity for the Palestinian leader with a Western news organization, was his most expansive discourse to date on security arrangements, and it underscored the significant gaps remaining between the two sides. Israel has insisted on a long-term military presence in the Jordan Valley and on controlling the timing and conditions for the withdrawal of its troops.]
By Judi Rudoren
 |
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President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority
said that a new
Palestinian state would not have an army, leaving NATO in
charge of
security. Pool photo by Issam Rimawi
|
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Six months into peace talks
dominated by discussion about security, President Mahmoud Abbas of the
Palestinian Authority has proposed to Secretary of State John Kerry that an
American-led NATO force patrol a future Palestinian state indefinitely, with
troops positioned throughout the territory, at all crossings, and within
Jerusalem.
Mr. Abbas said in an interview with The New
York Times at his headquarters here over the weekend that Israeli soldiers
could remain in the West Bank for up to five years — not three, as he previously
stated — and that Jewish settlements should be phased out of
the new Palestinian state along a similar timetable. Palestine, he said, would
not have its own army, only a police force, so the NATO mission would be
responsible for preventing the weapons smuggling and terrorism that Israel
fears.
“For a long time, and wherever they want, not
only on the eastern borders, but also on the western borders, everywhere,” Mr.
Abbas said of the imagined NATO mission. “The third party can stay. They can
stay to reassure the Israelis, and to protect us.
“We
will be demilitarized,” he added. “Do you think we have any illusion that we
can have any security if the Israelis do not feel they have security?”
The interview, a rarity for the Palestinian
leader with a Western news organization, was his most expansive discourse to
date on security arrangements, and it underscored the significant gaps
remaining between the two sides. Israel has insisted on a long-term military
presence in the Jordan Valley and on controlling the timing and conditions for
the withdrawal of its troops.
Mr. Abbas’s proposal comes at a sensitive
stage of the American-brokered negotiations. Mr. Kerry is preparing to present
a framework of core principles for a peace
deal, including a security plan, a border roughly along the 1967 lines,
Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and Jerusalem as a shared
capital.
The specificity of the framework, and how the
Israeli and Palestinian leaders express reservations to it, will likely
determine whether the talks continue past the April 29 expiration date. One
possibility, according to several people engaged in the process, is to extend
the negotiations through 2014, with Israel agreeing to freeze settlement
construction in areas planned to become part of Palestine under the framework,
and Mr. Abbas holding off joining the International Criminal Court and United
Nations agencies — steps that Israel and the United States vigorously oppose.
“It’s not a sacred date,” Mr. Abbas said.
“Suppose by the end of nine months we got something promising. Shall I stop? I
will not stop. If, after nine months, we didn’t get anything, if there is
nothing on the horizon, we will stop.”
But Mr. Abbas also distanced himself somewhat
from Mr. Kerry’s framework, saying, “He has the right to do whatever he wants,
and at the end we have the right to say whatever we want.” This echoed the statement last week by Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that “Israel does not have to agree with
everything America presents.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s office refused to respond to
Mr. Abbas’s comments. But the idea that Israel can rely only on its own
military, not a third party, is a standard trope of the prime minister’s. He
also says a fixed timetable is untenable, citing the volatility in the region.
“Our attitude toward international forces is skeptical in the extreme,” said
one senior Israeli official. “Timing can’t be artificial. It has to be based on
performance, and we want to be able to judge what’s going on with performance.”
Jen Psaki, Mr. Kerry’s spokeswoman, said in an
email that “there are many ideas being proposed from both the Israelis and
the Palestinians, but it is premature to make any predictions about the final
contents of a framework.” Others briefed on the negotiations said the secretary
was trying to bridge the gap on security by pressing Mr. Abbas to extend his
time frame, and by urging Israel to allow the United States, possibly with
Jordanian involvement, to assess the conditions for withdrawal.
“The balance point has not been found yet,”
said one Israeli security expert who has been consulted in the negotiations,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding them.
“The U.S. understands the Israeli position, accepts that there should be long-term
presence, but looks for ways to reconcile between Israeli security needs and
Palestinian needs for sovereignty and dignity.”
Mr. Abbas, 78, was relaxed and confident, if
not quite optimistic, during the interview, sprinkling his politics with bits
of humor. It took place in an outer sitting room where the Palestinian
president has met delegations of left-leaning American Jews and foreign
dignitaries and where, he recalled, the former American peace envoy George J.
Mitchell said of the Israelis before departing in 2011, “They foiled me.”
He sipped sweet tea and then strong coffee,
twice using a small buzzer to summon an aide who brought a single cigarette. He
spoke in English, occasionally leaning on two colleagues for translation. (It
took a few minutes to decipher whether Mr. Mitchell had said “fooled,” “failed”
or “foiled” — Mr. Abbas joked that all three applied.)
On recognition of
Israel as a Jewish state, Mr. Abbas said, “This is out of the question,” noting
that Jordan and Egypt were not asked to do so when they signed peace treaties
with Israel. He presented a 28-page packet he has been distributing widely that
included a 1948 letter signed by President Harry Truman in which “Jewish state”
was crossed out and replaced by “State of Israel”; statements by Israel’s
founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion; and a paper on Edwin Montagu, a
Jewish member of the British cabinet who opposed the 1917 Balfour Declaration
supporting a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Mr. Abbas said that he had been resisting
pressure to join the United Nations agencies from the Palestinian street and
leadership — including unanimous votes by the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s executive committee and the central committee of his own Fatah
Party — and that his staff had presented 63 applications ready for his
signature.
“No, I don’t want, I want to take advantage of
every minute now, maybe we can achieve something,” he said. “I don’t like to go
to the courts. I don’t like courts. I want to solve my problems directly
between the parties.” But he added, “If I don’t get my rights, now put your
foot in my shoe — what should I do?”
He would not, he said, allow a third intifada,
or uprising. “In my life, and if I have any more life in the future,” he said,
“I will never return to the armed struggle.”
The NATO security proposal is not entirely
new: Mr. Abbas said he had won support for the notion from former Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and from President George W. Bush. He also said he
presented the idea of an American-led force that included Jordanians to Mr.
Netanyahu, at a meeting at the prime minister’s house a few years ago with
then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I told him: ‘If you will not
trust your allies, so whom do you trust? I am not bringing for you Turkey and
Indonesia,’ ” Mr. Abbas recalled. “He said, ‘I trust my army only.’ ”
“We have to address, first of all, Mr.
Netanyahu,” the president said. “Mr. Netanyahu is the key. If he does believe
in peace, everything will be easy.”
