Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will visit Egypt in the coming days and present the Israeli response to the Egyptian-Jordanian proposals. Prime Minister Sharon said yesterday that the plan must undergo several \"changes and improvements.\"
The plan calls vaguely for an \"end [to] confrontation,\" and then stipulates that Israel end the \"military and economic siege and the blockade,\" \"withdraw all its military forces... to their locations that existed in September 2000,\" pay its debts to the PA which has been waging war against it for the past seven months, freeze all settlement activities, including those in eastern Jerusalem, and resume final-status negotiations on all outstanding issues with the aim of concluding the talks within one year. These talks, according to the Egyptian-Jordanian plan, would be based on the \"progress\" that was achieved at the Clinton-Barak-Arafat talks in Camp David and later in Taba.
It has in fact been learned that many of the above points are those to which Israel objects. For one thing, Sharon and Peres jointly reject out-of-hand the demand that the Camp David talks be the starting point of future negotiations. In addition, Israel demands that Jerusalem not be regarded as a settlement, and insists that the government guidelines be the yardstick: no new settlements will be built, but existing ones will be expanded according to need. Sharon and Peres will complain that the only demands that are detailed in the proposal are those on Israel, while the insistence on the end to Palestinian violence is only vaguely worded.
The basic premises of the Jordanian-Egyptian plan were put in clear perspective yesterday by PA official Nabil Abu Rudeineh, who, according to Ha\'aretz, emphasized that it corresponds entirely with the Palestinian position.
The plan calls vaguely for an \"end [to] confrontation,\" and then stipulates that Israel end the \"military and economic siege and the blockade,\" \"withdraw all its military forces... to their locations that existed in September 2000,\" pay its debts to the PA which has been waging war against it for the past seven months, freeze all settlement activities, including those in eastern Jerusalem, and resume final-status negotiations on all outstanding issues with the aim of concluding the talks within one year. These talks, according to the Egyptian-Jordanian plan, would be based on the \"progress\" that was achieved at the Clinton-Barak-Arafat talks in Camp David and later in Taba.
It has in fact been learned that many of the above points are those to which Israel objects. For one thing, Sharon and Peres jointly reject out-of-hand the demand that the Camp David talks be the starting point of future negotiations. In addition, Israel demands that Jerusalem not be regarded as a settlement, and insists that the government guidelines be the yardstick: no new settlements will be built, but existing ones will be expanded according to need. Sharon and Peres will complain that the only demands that are detailed in the proposal are those on Israel, while the insistence on the end to Palestinian violence is only vaguely worded.
The basic premises of the Jordanian-Egyptian plan were put in clear perspective yesterday by PA official Nabil Abu Rudeineh, who, according to Ha\'aretz, emphasized that it corresponds entirely with the Palestinian position.