Abbas, Mofaz to meet Sunday in Ramallah - Jerusalem World News

Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz (Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JWN and agencies)?Palestinian Authority President ?Mahmoud Abbas is to meet with Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz on Sunday in Ramallah, media reports say.

?There will be a meeting on Sunday between President Abbas and Mr. Mofaz. This comes after a request for a meeting from Mofaz,? chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio.

The meeting will be Abbas?s highest level meeting with an Israeli minister since 2010. It reportedly comes at Mofaz?s initiative in an attempt to fulfill one of the ?major conditions of his Kadima Party?s recent coalition agreement with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu?s Likud-led government.

Channel 2 News reported that the meeting was arranged by Kadima MK Yisrael Hasson and attorney Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu?s chief negotiator.

Mofaz is expected to emphasize to Abbas that now is the time to take advantage of Israel?s wall-to-wall coalition of 94 Knesset members and reach a peace agreement on two states for two peoples.

Mofaz literally addressed an appeal to Abbas at a recent meeting of the Kadima council, saying, ?Forget the letters, forget the preconditions?Let?s talk peace now. The coalition today is the widest ever, and this allows for a political breakthrough.?

Abbas has been stonewalling a return to negotiations with Israel by insisting on several preconditions: that Israel accept the pre-June 1967 lines as final borders, release 123 long-term Arab prisoners, and halt settlement construction in the West Bank. He recently threatened to renew attempts to achieve non-member status for a Palestinian state at the United Nations if peace talks with Israel do not resume.

Mofaz is also said to be responding to a pessimistic statement last week by Abbas. At a conference on Jerusalem held in Ramallah, Abbas declared that the peace process is ?clinically dead? and blamed Israel for the lack of progress. ?The ball is in the Israeli court,? Abbas said.

Mofaz held high-level meetings with US officials in Washington last week on the state of Israel-Palestinian relations. At the same time, Erekat was in Washington meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on ways to resume the stalled peace talks with Israel.

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