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Israeli threat to Hamas on borders

Atul Aneja

Accept terms and resume talks, Palestinian group told

DUBAI: In a flurry of statements, Israel has reiterated that it would begin settling its borders with a future Palestinian state unilaterally, unless the militant group Hamas accepted its conditions and resumed talks by the year-end.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet colleagues have demanded that the Palestinian group Hamas must renounce violence, recognise Israel's right to exist and abide by the previous peace agreements as a precondition for talks. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, but its leaders have been focusing on the withdrawal from Palestinian territories that Israel had occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Setting a deadline, Mr. Olmert said, "We will wait for a month, two months, three months, six months, and if we see no change, then we will probably move forward even without an agreement." Mr. Olmert's "convergence plan" that he wishes to implement envisages the removal of remote Israeli settlements and consolidation of key settlements inside the "security wall" that Israel has raised in order to block suicide bombers from the West Bank reaching Israeli territory. Mr. Olmert warned that, "If the Palestinians do not accept these conditions, Israel will have to determine its borders by itself." Mr. Olmert hopes to implement his plans before the Bush Presidency in the United States ends in the beginning of 2009.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said the new administration had no intention of resuming peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whom she described as "irrelevant."

Turnaround

Israeli officials have been saying talks would be meaningless unless there was a turnaround in the thinking of Hamas, which has formed a new Palestinian Government following parliamentary elections in January 2006.

Meanwhile, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon has said the Government would make up its mind by the end of the year on whether negotiations with the Palestinians could be held. "If by the start of next year, we see that there is no Palestinian partner, we will begin to promote our initiative after having mobilised support [for convergence] from the international community," he said.

Mr. Ramon said a target of end-2008 had been set to implement the convergence plan. "By that date, we will deploy on the border which will mark the permanent frontier of the state of Israel." Keen to get external support for his plan, the Israeli Prime Minister is heading for Washington by the end of this month. He is also expected to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the coming weeks.

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