THREE days before the assassination of the prime minister, Mr Yitzhak Rabin, on November 4th last, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators finalised a tentative agreement providing for the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israel's most respected newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported yesterday.
The agreed "memorandum of understanding" was the fruit of some 20 meetings, in Jerusalem and across Europe, by delegations "headed by the Israeli minister Mr Yossi Beilin and by Mr Yasser Arafat's deputy, Mr Abu Mazen, the newspaper said. Apart from including unprecedented Israeli consent to Palestinian statehood, the document also made provision for an "extra territorial" corridor running across Israel to link Gaza and the West Bank the two halves of "Palestine" it stated that Israeli sovereignty would be expanded to encompass most Israeli West Bank settlers and it provided for the mosques atop Jerusalem's Temple Mount to be given extra territorial status as well.
Under the terms of their peace accords, Israel and the Palestinians are supposed to begin discussing issues such as Palestinian statehood, the future status of Jerusalem, and the fate of the settlements only in so called "final status" negotiations scheduled for this spring.
The opposition Likud party, fighting to unseat the Labour government in elections on May 29th, launched its campaign earlier this week charging that Mr Shimon Peres's government was ready to cede partial sovereignty in Jerusalem to the Palestinians, and that secret negotiations on this have been going on for some months. Mr Peres vehemently denied both allegations, but yesterday's Ha'aretz article certainly appeared to confirm the latter charge.
Mr Beilin himself yesterday confirmed he had been holding meetings with Palestinian officials, but insisted that these were exploratory talks rather than formal negotiations. He said the results had left him optimistic about the prospects for an eventual equitable agreement. Palestinian sources countered that there had been huge gaps over issues between the two sides.
Ha`aretz reported that Mr Rabin was killed before he could be shown the joint document, and that Mr Peres rejected it because it left the issue of Jerusalem unresolved and also provided for eventual Palestinian control of a key strip of land along the border with Jordan.
There was speculation here that "Mr Peres may have leaked the story to Ha`aret in an attempt to show him taking a tough line over possible compromises with the Palestinians. If so, it may prove a miscalculation, because the main effect of the story seems to be to confirm the Likud claims, and puncture the Labour denials that secret contacts have been taking place.