Jerusalem/Ramallah(DPA) : Israel and the Palestinians were set to formally launch new peace negotiations Wednesday for the first time in seven years, but the talks come amid a spurt in violence in Gaza and a dispute over new construction in a Jewish settlement.
A joint “steering committee” that will be leading the talks, announced by US President George W. Bush at last month’s conference in Annapolis, Maryland, was scheduled to hold its first meeting shortly after noon in Jerusalem.
The talks would be led by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qureia.
Israeli officials said the first meeting would focus primarily on procedural issues, including how often the committee is to meet and how the negotiations will be managed.
A photo opportunity scheduled for the start of the meeting was cancelled, possibly indicating underlying tensions.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians wanted the issue of Jewish settlements to be the top and only item on the agenda.
The Palestinians are angry at Israeli plans to build 307 new apartments in Har Homa, a settlement on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, as the talks were due to get underway, Palestinian militants in Gaza launched a barrage of as many as 19 rockets at southern Israel, a military spokeswoman said, at least five of which landed in the town of Sderot.
A spokesman for the radical Islamic Jihad faction’s armed wing said the salvo was in response to an Israeli military incursion into the southern Gaza Strip Tuesday, in which at least six militants were killed.
Gaza, ruled by the radical Islamic Hamas movement, is left out of the new talks between Israel and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who on the ground controls only the West Bank after Hamas violently seized sole control of the Strip in June.
But Erekat said Abbas’ West Bank-based administration would be unable to negotiate with Israel if settlement activities continued.
“It was agreed in Annapolis to launch the peace process, and it is our right to demand that settlements be the only subject on the agenda,” he told Voice of Palestine radio, referring to the US-hosted, Nov 27 peace conference.
Erekat warned the project “will destroy all efforts to launch the peace process” and called on the US “to force Israel to meet its obligations,” which include halting all settlement activity in the Palestinian areas.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged not to build new settlements or confiscate more land in the West Bank for construction.
But Israel has made no secret of the fact that it continues to build in key settlement blocks which it wants to keep as part of a final peace deal, mostly around Jerusalem and near the “green line” separating it from the West Bank.