Land swap could be key to Israel deal
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Your support makes all the difference.The international conference called by the US could commit both sides to an equal land swap as part of an agreement on the borders of a future Palestinian State, Palestinian negotiators indicated yesterday.
But they urged Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, who is due in the Middle East on Sunday for key talks with both sides, to press Israel for a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian's chief negotiator, warned Ms Rice that a freeze was needed to preserve "the goodwill gained in recent talks and the two-state solution, on which peace between Israelis and Palestinians is based".
Mr Erekat's call, in a letter to the international Quartet of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, came as his colleague Ahmed Qureia, suggested Israel would be able to keep certain parts of the West Bank in a peace deal if it was willing to yield equal amounts of territory in return.
The public airing of the land swap proposal to Associated Press by Mr Qureia, who like Mr Erekat is a member of the team trying to negotiate an accord with Israel ahead of the international Annapolis conference later this year, follows similar suggestions by Haim Ramon, a close Cabinet ally of the Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert.
Mr Erekat's letter expressed "outrage" at an order issued by the Israeli military last month confiscating 279 acres of Palestinian land for an "alternate road" for Palestinians in the West Bank, calling it "de facto annexation".
He said that at a time "when [Mr] Olmert and President Abbas have been meeting regularly to rebuild trust between us... the Government of Israel continues to create facts on the ground that are quickly foreclosing the two-state solution".
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