Avoid unilateral declarations, Netanyahu tells Palestinians

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Palestinians to refrain from taking unilateral steps toward achieving a state.

The Israeli leader made his remarks Sunday a day after a Palestinian official said in a London-based Arabic newspaper that the Palestinians could break agreements signed with Israel.

“We expect the Palestinians to honor their commitment to hold direct negotiations,” Netanyahu said at the beginning of the weekly Cabinet meeting. “I think that any attempt to bypass them by appealing to international bodies is unrealistic and will not give any impetus to a genuine diplomatic process.”

Netanyahu said his government is holding “intensive contacts” with the Obama administration in a bid to restart peace talks that began just a month ago with the Palestinians.

“Our goal is not just to resume the process, but to advance it in such a way that it cannot be halted in a few weeks or months, and will enter into approximately one year of continuous negotiations on the fundamental problems in order to try and reach a framework agreement ahead of a peace settlement,” he said.

The peace talks halted last month with the expiration of a 10-month moratorium on building in West Bank settlements. The Palestinians have said they will not return to the table until that moratorium is reinstated.

The United States has offered Israel several diplomatic and security incentives in exchange for a two-month extension. Netanyahu has said that his government would fall if he extends the freeze, though he offered a freeze extension in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee secretary, said in an interview published Saturday in al-Hayat that the Palestinians would consider breaking agreements signed with Israel, such as the Oslo Accords, which set up the framework for peace negotiations.

“The situation in which one side will be bound by the agreements forever while the other side violates them to the point of annulling them entirely cannot continue,” Rabbo said. “If Israel continues with its current policy, the moment may come when we will re-examine these agreements.”

Rabbo also accused Netanyahu of “forming an alliance with the American right to weaken President Barack Obama’s government.”