Israel rejects any conditions for new talks

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Israel will not accept conditions for resuming direct negotiations with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Cabinet ministers affirmed in a meeting late Sunday, reflecting a hard line just as invitations to the talks appeared near.

The Palestinians want the framework and agenda of negotiations worked out ahead of time.

Under an emerging compromise, the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators – the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia – was expected to issue an invitation for direct talks that would list underlying principles and a time frame.

However, Netanyahu and his inner circle fear that a Quartet statement would be a “fig leaf for Palestinian preconditions,” an official in Netanyahu’s office said on condition of anonymity because no government statement was made.

In a meeting late Sunday, the prime minister and his top ministers decided to hold out for a separate invitation from the United States without preconditions, the official said.

It was not clear whether the U.S. plans to issue such a separate invitation.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is wary of entering open-ended talks with Netanyahu, who has retreated from some of the concessions offered by his predecessors. Abbas wants Israel to accept the principle of Palestinian statehood in the lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war with minor modifications, and wants all Jewish settlement building to stop during negotiations.