Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH – The Obama administration plans to present in January its own plan for a draft framework agreement on permanent status between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), an Israeli official said on Monday. Zahava Gal-On, Knesset Member and chairwoman of the leftist Meretz party, said in a statement that US Secretary of State John Kerry informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of this during their seven-hour meeting in Rome two weeks ago. Kerry is set to arrive in Israel from Egypt on Tuesday evening, and is scheduled to meet with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the latest developments surrounding the peace talks. Gal-On said after meeting with Palestinian and American officials she was basing her information on conversations she has had in recent days with senior Palestinian, American and Arab officials. “The Obama administration plans to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough at the beginning of 2014,” said Gal-On. “There will be a new diplomatic program, based on the pre-1967 lines with agreed land swaps,” she added. She added that “the plan will include a gradual timetable for implementation and will also address the dimension of regional peace based on the Arab Peace Initiative. It will also include an economic plan to invest billions in the Palestinian economy.” According to Gal-On, the US has made a subtle but significant switch from a “third-party trying to bring the two sides together, to a role of direct involvement in the process.” She attributed the American's preparedness for increased involvement to the general feeling of skepticism among the public on both sides regarding the talks. The Israeli Army Radio said that the US plan is similar to the peace proposal put forward by former US President Bill Clinton, which is based on an Israeli retreat to 1949 armistice lines, and some swaps of territory. The said that the US administration believes that Israel under Netanyahu and the PA under Abbas are capable of reaching agreement. The US moves comes after three months of talks between the sides which have reportedly made very little headway. Until now, the talks were based on the idea that the two sides negotiate directly, with the US only acting as a mediator. The negotiations are taking place in secrecy and neither side has given details on their content. On Sunday, Netanyahu's outgoing national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, said that should the current US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians fail, Israel's position in the world could worsen, and international pressure would mount. “It (is) clear to everyone that handling international pressure depends on the progress of the negotiations, and if the talks fail, it will give everyone interested in boycotting us every reason to do so,” Amidror said at a ceremony marking the end of his tenure. The development comes a day before Kerry's visit to the region for talks with Abbas and Netanyahu. The PA slammed the Israeli government late Sunday after the Israeli Housing and Construction Ministry announced that it would approve the sale of land for some 1,700 apartments over the Green Line, which came on the heels of a statement by Netanyahu earlier in the day that Israel must keep a “security border” in the Jordan Valley in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Nabil Abu Rdaineh, spokesman for Abbas, told the Wafa news agency that Netanyahu's decision to “build a wall in the Jordan Valley is only a pre-emptive step to thwart the upcoming visit of United States Secretary of State John Kerry to the region.”
