EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak has said Cairo will spare no effort to ensure that negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis do not collapse because of the expansion of Israeli West Bank settlements.
Mr Mubarak, who attended the relaunch of talks in Washington, said Egypt wanted to see a “just, comprehensive and viable peace which would bring an end to the occupation of Palestinian and Arab territories and the suffering of the Palestinian people”.
His comments followed a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas who has threatened to withdraw from negotiations if Israel does not renew a partial curb on settlement activity which expired on September 26th.
He is expected to make his final decision on whether or not to continue negotiating during a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Libya scheduled for Friday.
Since construction has already begun on 350 new housing units in the West Bank, Mr Abbas is facing mounting pressure from Palestinians to pull out.
Jordan’s King Abdullah, who also attended the Washington talks, told Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a phone conversation: “All unilateral actions that threaten peace, in particular the construction of settlements, must cease. The people of the region will pay the price for the failure of peace efforts.”
Earlier in the week, Mr Mubarak issued a stern warning. He said if talks “collapse violence and terrorism will erupt in the Middle East and all over the world”.
The statements of the two leaders reflect concern that deadlock over settlement construction could persist and derail negotiations after only three sessions. If this happens, Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to have reached peace treaties with Israel, could come under severe popular pressure to freeze already chilly relations with Israel.
Last weekend King Abdullah and Egyptian foreign minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit expressed support for Mr Abbas’s stance. He has the full backing of all 13 factions belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organisation and more than two-thirds of Palestinians. However, Egypt and Jordan seem to be contradicting their stated positions at the behest of the Obama administration which insists the talks must continue.
If they collapse or fail to enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state, the Palestinians have said they will unilaterally declare their state in spite of the risk of Israeli military action.
