Today on “This Day in History in the Israel-Palestine Conflict:” The Taba Summit January 21st 2001, the Taba Summit opens in Taba, Egypt. These negotiations were held in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000 also known as the second Intifada. The earlier Clinton Parameters and the pre-1967 borders served as the starting point for the negotiations over territory. On the issue of Jerusalem, the Palestinians were willing to recognize Israeli sovereignty of the Jewish and Armenian Quarters of Jerusalem, while the Palestinians were to claim sovereignty over the Christian and Arab Quarters. Both sides acknowledged the sovereignty of the counterpart to his own religious sites. This means that Israel would have authority over the Western Wall and the two sides were close to accepting that the Palestinians would keep authority of the Temple Mount. Israel was even willing to accept the idea that Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and Palestine at once. Despite the incredible progress of the negotiating teams, there were still wide gaps between Israel and Palestine concerning issues over the Palestinian Right of Return and Israel’s formal annexation of certain settlement in the Jerusalem area, such as Ma’ale Adumim. The negotiations were suspended due to the upcoming Israeli elections with the intention of being resumed after the elections, sometime in the following April. The Taba Talks were extremely positive at the time, despite some remaining pit falls to be worked through. At the time, both sides agree that “they had never been closer to an agreement.” However, on January 28th 2001, Yassir Arafat attacked Israel in a speech he made in Switzerland, using language contradictory to the Taba Talks. Just a few short weeks later, the newly elected Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, asserted that nothing agreed at Taba amounted to an official commitment and Israel was only committed to complying with signed agreements (referring to the Oslo Accords). Furthermore, Sharon flatly rejected resuming the impending agreements left off at Taba, thus marking an official end to the Taba Negotiations. theguardian/world/2001/feb/08/israel4 pij.org/details.php?id=32 fmep.org/reports/archive/vol.-11/no.-2/deconstructing-the-taba-talks jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/Taba.html
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:00:02 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015