Ministers in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Mr Kerry of effectively endorsing "anti-Semitic" efforts to impose sanctions on the country

Palestinian Leader Seeks NATO Force in Future State


By JODI RUDORENFEB. 2, 2014
NY TIMES

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.”