Kerry visit off after Abbas moves to join U.N. agencies

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (seated), joined by Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, signs an application to join U.N. agencies in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (seated), joined by Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, signs an application to join U.N. agencies in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

JERUSALEM - President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority signed papers Tuesday to join 15 international agencies, threatening a breakdown in Mideast peace talks. A meeting today between Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who had planned to finalize a deal extending the negotiations into 2015, was canceled.

Abbas, who has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public to press his case for statehood through United Nations agencies, said Tuesday that he was taking that course because Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of March, as promised when the talks started last summer.

“We do not want to use this right against anybody or confront anybody,” Abbas said as he signed the papers, in a speech broadcast live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for solution, this becomes our right.”

Israel and the United States both vigorously oppose Palestinian membership in those international agencies. Congress passed a law saying such membership could trigger a withdrawal of U.S. financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and other steps.

Kerry, who had flown to Brussels for a NATO meeting Tuesday and was planning to return to see Abbas in Ramallah today, was no longer making the trip, a senior State Department official said.

A senior Palestinian official said the 15 U.N. agencies Abbas moved to join - out of more than 60 possible - did not include the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice. Many Palestinians hope to prosecute Israelis in the courts for what they consider war crimes, including the demolition of homes, arrests and killings of Palestinians, and building of settlements.

The 15 included the Geneva and Vienna conventions and agencies dealing with women’s and children’s rights, the official said.

Officials involved in the peace negotiations said the deal under discussion would involve the release of Jonathan Pollard, an American serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, along with the promised fourth batch of long-serving prisoners - including Arab-Israeli citizens - and 400 other Palestinian prisoners.

It also included a partial freeze on Israeli construction in West Bank settlements in exchange for the Palestinians’ continued commitment to refrain from joining international agencies.

Kerry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel negotiated details of the emerging deal in meetings that began Monday night and continued Tuesday. The agreement had been awaiting approval from the White House regarding Pollard as well as from Abbas.

Israel refused to release the fourth batch of prisoners unless Abbas agreed to extend negotiations, arguing that its original commitment was not binding because no meaningful talks had taken place since November.

“Today is the last chance that Israel has to release these prisoners,” Jameel Shehada, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, had said in a radio interview Tuesday morning. “Yesterday, the leadership had taken a clear stance to go to international agencies because it is very clear that the Israelis are not interested in abiding by their part of the deal and releasing the prisoners.”

Abbas said Tuesday that the Palestinians “will continue our efforts to reach a peaceful solution through negotiations.” But he also said that if Israel did not release the promised prisoners,he would join the rest of the 63 international agencies for which the Palestinians became eligible after the U.N. General Assembly granted them nonmember observer-state status in 2012.

This “is a right for us that we found,” he said. “We are determined to reach a settlement through negotiations and through peaceful, popular resistance. We reject anything else.”

Front Section, Pages 6 on 04/02/2014