Lukewarm reception for Palestinian peace plan

Israeli officials have shown little enthusiasm for a Palestinian peace proposal which appears to soften long-standing territorial demands and offers Israel sovereignty in parts of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Israeli troops killed a Palestinian militia activist, Walid Sbeh, near Bethlehem. The military said he sent suicide bombers into Israel.

Later yesterday, Palestinians said Israeli tanks and vehicles entered the village where Sbeh, an activist in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed.

Soldiers also killed a Palestinian and wounded another at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinian witnesses said. The army said it knew nothing of the incident.

With US president George Bush working on a proposal to move Middle East peace talks forward, the Palestinians presented a detailed plan for a state that would live in peace with Israel.

The plan was delivered to US secretary of state Colin Powell in Washington last week by visiting Palestinian Cabinet minister Nabil Shaath, Palestinian officials said.

The plan hints at flexibility over the issue of Palestinian refugees and offers minor changes in long-held territorial demands, but appeared to be far from what Israel’s present government would be prepared to accept.

Israeli officials expressed scepticism, in line with prime minister Ariel Sharon’s position that negotiations for a Palestinian state could resume only after violence has ended, and the first stage would be an interim agreement that would last years.

Israeli foreign ministry official Gideon Meir said Israel had not received the plan and said it would be ‘‘premature ... as long as violence continues’’.

The Palestinians apparently hoped to generate goodwill in the US administration with their new proposal.

As before, the goal is a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital. However, it hints at softening the Palestinians’ stance on key issues that were the undoing of an ambitious peace effort a year and a half ago.

It calls for ‘‘a fair and agreed-upon solution’’ to the refugee problem, based on United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.

The 1949 resolution gives the refugees the right to choose whether to return to their former homes or receive compensation, a concept Israel rejects, saying an influx of millions of Palestinians would overwhelm the Jewish state.

Up to now the Palestinians have insisted that all the refugees and their descendants, about four million people, must have the right to return to Israel, a nation with five million Jews.

Adding the phrase ‘‘fair and agreed upon solution’’ might indicate willingness to negotiate a formula that is less than the total ‘‘right of return’’ the Palestinians have claimed up to now.

On other issues - such as borders and Jerusalem - the proposal embraces concessions the Palestinians reportedly agreed to in the failed peace talks but had not made public.

When the talks failed, Israel and the United States both said their offers were off the table, and after Middle East violence erupted, the hawkish Sharon was elected to replace Israel’s dovish government. He has offered the Palestinians much less than his predecessor, Ehud Barak.

According to the new Palestinian proposal, the borders between Palestine and Israel would be the lines of June 4, 1967, before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, but the ‘‘sides can agree on minor modifications’’.

However, the proposal also states that neither side will have territorial claims beyond the June 4, 1967 lines.

It addresses the issue of Jerusalem, long one of the biggest obstacles to peace, by offering Israel sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and part of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

That would put the hilltop above the wall, holy to both sides, in Palestinian hands.

The proposal also said a Palestinian state would agree to limit its possession of weapons - a key Israeli demand - and that Palestine and Israel would agree not to participate in any military alliances against each other.