Israelis and Palestines resume dialogue on the Middle East peace process. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have agreed to hold a summit today with US President Bill Clinton to relaunch the 18-month-long Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The three-way meeting takes place at the end of a weekend dedicated by Madeleine Albright to ‘patch up’ the tears and to try to bring together Israeli and Palestinian positions on some key aspects of the agreement regarding the withdrawal of Israeli troops from 13 percent of the territory of the West Bank in exchange for detailed security guarantees required by the Jewish state to the Palestinians.

The decision of a tripartite summit was taken after a minivertice on the Middle East that took place late last night in a hotel in New York and that saw the presence of Arafat and Netanyahu together with the energetic head of US diplomacy Madeleine Albright . “We have made progress that made a meeting in Washington possible”, explained the secretary of Sato Usa. Now the American president “will have the opportunity to consolidate the progress already recorded”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has cooled the minds. According to Israeli television, Netanyahu is convinced that an agreement with the Palestinians is close but not imminent, and that after the summit between him, Arafat and Clinton in the White House will not be announced any change.
The coup d’etat in the negotiations is intended to unblock a peace process that has been deadlocked for 18 months. Precisely from the Israeli decision to put in place the American proposal – that the Palestinian delegation has accepted “completely” – which provides, in application of the Oslo agreements of 1993, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from 13 percent of the occupied territories of the West Bank. The Israeli government initially counter-imposed a withdrawal from nine percent of the territories, arguing that what is required by the Palestinians involves cessions that threaten the security of the Jewish state.

Then, after hesitating for a few months, Netanyahu seems to have ended up accepting the principle of the withdrawal of troops in exchange for some conditions. According to rumors, he would have asked that 3 percent of the territories in question be declared a “nature reserve”, ie an area in which security as well as building permits remain in the hands of the Palestinian authorities.

The Palestinians, for their part, demand a “significant” withdrawal of Israeli troops in the West Bank, as foreseen by the agreements, a freezing of the process of colonization of the occupied territories and a series of measures by the Israeli government against Palestinian extremist settlers. On none of these points, however, they would have obtained the desired insurance.