Jerusalem - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's administration proposed in 2008 that Israel annex most of the settlements it has built in and around Jerusalem since 1967, according to a document published by Al Jazeera on Sunday.
The leaked minutes of a meeting between United States, Palestinian and Israeli officials showed a senior Palestinian proposing that Israel annex all but one of the Jerusalem settlements as part of a broader peace to create an independent Palestinian state.
The status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital, is one of the most sensitive issues on the negotiating table. The document suggested that the Palestinians have shown more readiness to make concessions than they have publicly stated.
“This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition,” the document quoted Ahmed Qurie, a senior Palestinian negotiator at the time, as saying at the meeting.
He said the Palestinians had refused to make such a concession during negotiations led by the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in 2000.
Abbas said as recently as last week the fate of Jerusalem was not up for discussion. “From our perspective, there are no negotiations over Jerusalem. Jerusalem is ours,” he said.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war, annexing the walled Old City and a belt of surrounding West Bank land shortly after the conflict in a move that has never won international recognition.
The Qatar-based Al Jazeera channel said the transcript of the meeting was one of 1 600 documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that it had obtained.
The peace talks are at a standstill due to a dispute over Jewish settlement construction, with the Palestinians refusing to return to negotiations until Israel halts building.
The meeting, dated June 15, 2008, was part of negotiations at the time between the Palestinians and the Israeli government of the then prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
The talks, launched in late 2007 by the US administration of president George Bush, came to an end when Olmert was forced from office over corruption allegations in 2009. - Reuters