The United Nations Security Council is planning to pass a resolution on Tuesday that would call on the next Israeli government to continue negotiating "core issues," meaning the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority demand for the immigration of Arabs to Israel. Pre-election polls show that Likud chairman and former Prime Binyamin Netanyahu has a commanding lead and will form the next coalition government.
The U.N. resolution has the backing of all Security Council members and, if passed, will be the first time in five years that the council has adopted a resolution calling for collective peace in the Middle East.
The text of the draft was drafted by American Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad in cooperation with Russia. The proposed resolution calls on Israel and the PA to continue "bilateral negotiating process and their determined efforts to reach their goal of concluding a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception."
It calls on both parties "to fulfill their obligations ... and refrain from any steps that could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of negotiations."
Israel has accepted American initiatives to scrap the original Roadmap plans that called on the PA to cease incitement and terror before reaching the stage of drawing up of final borders for a new Arab state within Israel's current borders.
The resolution also backs a move by Russia to hold an international conference on the Middle East in Moscow, a move that Israel has opposed but which is backed by the Quartet, comprising the U.N., the U.S., Russia and the European Union (EU).
The Quartet has been conferring with an official of the 22-member Arab League.
Ambassador Khalizad said the timing of the resolution is designed to help the Obama administration during the transition period until U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20. No reference was made to the upcoming Israeli elections.
The PA has rejected Israel's latest offers for a final-status settlement, PA negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Friday. Speaking to Arab media, Qureia said that Israel had offered to "swap" about 7 percent of land in Judea and Samaria, including Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Efrat-Gush Etzion, for land inside pre-1967 Israel. Qureia said the PA had rejected the offer, "because it would split the Palestinian state and not allow it to develop."
In addition, he said that Israel had offered to allow 5,000 PA Arabs to immigrate to Israel over five years. That, too, was rejected as being too few, Qureia said, although he added that the PA was no longer seeking the return of "millions" of descendants of Arabs who fled Israel