A surprise decision by President Mahmoud Abbas to sign more than a dozen international conventions that could give Palestinians greater leverage against Israel yesterday left the US struggling to put peace talks back on track.
A senior Palestinian official, voicing frustration deepened by Israel’s failure to carry out a pledged release of several dozen Palestinian prisoners, said the eight-month-old talks had become merely “negotiating about negotiating”.
The Palestinians yesterday handed over to a UN representative and other diplomats applications Abbas signed late on Tuesday to join 15 international conventions.
They include the Geneva Conventions, the key text of international law on the conduct of war and occupation.
Palestinian officials said Israel’s failure to let the prisoners go meant Abbas no longer had to stick to a commitment not to confront it at the UN and other international bodies.
The developments further complicated efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to piece together a three-way deal to push the faltering negotiations past an April 29 deadline and into 2015.
The talks had become ‘negotiating about negotiating’
The talks were already in trouble over the issues of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War – and Palestinian opposition to Netanyahu’s demand to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
Israel had said it first wanted a Palestinian commitment to negotiate past the original target date for a deal before freeing the last of the 104 prisoners it promised to release as part of US efforts to restart the negotiations last July.
In Brussels for a Nato meeting, Kerry cancelled a planned visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday to meet Abbas, saying it was important to keep the peace process moving but “in the end, it is up to the parties”.
Palestinians hope Abbas’s move will give them a stronger basis to appeal to the International Criminal Court and eventually lodge formal complaints against Israel for its continued occupation of territory seized in 1967, lands they see as vital to an independent state. Most countries deem the Israeli settlements as illegal.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, deputy head of the PLO, cautioned yesterday against simply returning to an “empty routine” at the negotiating table. He reaffirmed that Palestinians wanted talks to focus on setting the future borders of their state.