Netanyahu and the Palestinian peace process

In London, Netanyahu has, he claims, "gone the extra mile." By this he may mean that he is ready to talk about evacuating the 13 percent of the West Bank the Americans have suggested, but only under certain conditions. Those conditions could well include avoiding any commitment to suspend further Jewish settlements, ducking a third phase of evacuation, as laid down under Oslo, and proceeding to negotiations on a final settlement with Yasser Arafat having given a guarantee in advance that the Palestinians will not declare a state if those negotiations fail.

If so, Netanyahu in essence wants to take every remaining card out of the Palestinian hand, and to compromise the whole of the final stage of the peace process, in return for a few thousand hectares of land. It looks as if the Americans are not going to play this game. They have persuaded Arafat to accept the proposals they put to both sides. Further negotiations will only go ahead, Madeleine Albright said, if Israel also accepts the American proposals. The Israeli government may finally have to choose between the intransigence it prefers and a quarrel with the one country with which it must maintain a continuing friendship.

-- The Guardian, London