OLMERT ABBAS NARROW LAND GAP

Hamas warns Abbas peace talks a trap By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer Sat Oct 13, 1:39 AM ET

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas' top leaders in Gaza and Syria warned the moderate Palestinian president Friday not to fall into the trap of an upcoming U.S.-sponsored peace conference with Israel. Ismail Haniyeh, who was deposed as Palestinian prime minister after Hamas violently seized Gaza in June, urged President Mahmoud Abbas to mend his rift with the Islamic militant group and criticized him for planning to attend the peace conference next month.Don't fall into the trap of the coming conference. Don't make new compromises on Jerusalem, on our sovereignty, Haniyeh said, speaking to thousands of cheering supporters for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.Hamas' Syria-based supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, echoed the warning in his own holiday message, accusing Israel and the U.S. of taking advantage of the Palestinian rift to try to wrest concessions in peace negotiations.

Abbas retaliated for Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip by expelling the group from his government and setting up his own administration in the West Bank. Mashaal urged Abbas to accept the Islamists' invitations for dialogue.Abbas and his allies will find out that they are pursuing nothing but a mirage, Mashaal said on Hamas radio.Israel and the Palestinians hope to present the contours of a final peace accord at the conference, tentatively set for Annapolis, Md., at the end of November.Israel has been pressing for a vaguely worded document that would gloss over the toughest issues — borders, control over disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in the 1948 war that followed Israel's creation.Palestinians prefer a detailed preliminary agreement with a timetable for creating a Palestinian state.

But Thursday, a key Palestinian negotiator said agreement on peace was near, adding that he doubted the U.S. would convene the conference if the two sides did not agree in advance on outlines for an accord.We have never been closer to achieving the end game than we are now, negotiator Saeb Erekat said.In an interview with Israel's Channel 10 TV, Erekat discounted Hamas' ability to sabotage a peace accord. He acknowledged that Abbas' Fatah movement was not strong enough to retake Gaza by force, but insisted once you produce an end game agreement, Hamas is down without firing a shot.Although Abbas says he has authority over Gaza, in practice he has little influence there.Haniyeh, who now heads the Hamas government in Gaza, received a hero's welcome from the crowd when he arrived at the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City with around 20 black-uniformed bodyguards for festive prayers.He told supporters that Abbas could not negotiate without Hamas' support.Don't go to conference when you don't have the power card in your pocket — and the power card is Hamas, Haniyeh told his supporters.Gaza's international isolation, empty shelves and bitter internal rivalries cast a pall over the Eid al-Fitr holiday — meant to be one of the happiest dates on the Muslim calendar.Israel has barred the entrance of all goods to the territory except humanitarian aid, and Western governments have imposed a financial boycott.Deepening the misery are ongoing clashes between the Israeli military and Gaza militants who fire rockets almost daily into Israel.

Hamas said one of its fighters was killed and five other people were wounded in an Israeli ground missile attack early Saturday. The Israeli military said troops targeted a squad that had launched a rocket attack on Israel.Because tensions between members of Hamas and Fatah in Gaza remain high, Hamas security forces were deployed in the streets to keep order during the holiday. Even Friday's prayers were divided along factional lines, with separate locations for supporters of Gaza's Hamas rulers and their rivals from Abbas' Fatah.

Olmert, Abbas narrow land gap By Adam Entous
Fri Oct 12, 12:48 PM ET

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The gap is narrowing between Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the amount of territory Israel would hand over to a Palestinian state, people close to the talks said a month ahead of a U.S.-sponsored conference. But Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials say sketching the boundaries of a future state may be the easy part -- real progress, they say, depends on narrowing differences over the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, on which little progress can be discerned so far after closed-door meetings.Even vague talk of dividing the city has stirred opposition within Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition cabinet.Israeli officials link easing their stance on Jerusalem -- which Israel wants to keep as its undivided capital -- to the Palestinians being prepared to soften their demand that refugees and their descendants be allowed to settle in Israel.

In this tortuous process, everything is difficult, everything is problematic. But Jerusalem and refugees are the most difficult issues, said Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel's leftist Labor foreign minister when the last talks on the final status of a peace deal collapsed in 2001.Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have said little in public about talks they have held in recent months.Western officials have told Reuters Olmert has privately signaled a willingness to consider handing over 90-something percent of the occupied West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, with additional land swaps, as part of a final peace deal.
That may put the two sides within a few percentage points of consensus on the territory issue ahead of the Annapolis meeting.

ARITHMETIC

Western officials said it was unclear whether Olmert's 90-something percent means he might match Israel's last and best offer before negotiations broke down in 2001. At that time, Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted ideas floated by U.S. President Bill Clinton that would have produced a Palestinian state in 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of Gaza.Abbas's negotiating team considers the Clinton parameters and follow-up talks held in Taba, Egypt to be the basis for renewed negotiations with Olmert, Palestinian sources said.Abbas, in one of the rare public comments on the talks so far, said this week that a Palestinian state must have exactly as much land as that seized by Israel in the 1967 war.

Ben-Ami said: We don't need to invent the wheel ... These are the Clinton parameters. I don't see any other solution.But Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin said it would be wrong to see one past proposal as the one to guide future negotiations.U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Jerusalem and the West Bank Ramallah next week to press Abbas and Olmert to reach agreement on a joint document addressing core issues for the conference, which President George W. Bush hopes will launch a final push to end the 60-year-old conflict.We feel a growing sense of urgency from Washington, said a senior Israeli official. He said he feared Israel's security concerns were not being taken fully into account in Bush's rush for some sort of deal before leaving office in early 2009.They are eager to get results, the official said.

Desperation breeds foolishness.

Western officials said heavy U.S. pressure on its Israeli ally would make it very difficult for Olmert to offer less than Clinton's 97 percent figure for West Bank land. Yet that could also trigger a backlash from within his own coalition. Everyone wants peace but they don't want to pay the price, said Ben-Ami. The maximum Olmert can offer falls short of the minimum for the Palestinians. If he makes proposals that are more far-reaching, he will lose his coalition.