Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - President-elect George W. Bush's incoming administration is hoping that President Clinton can wrap up a Middle East peace deal before he leaves office in less than a month, according to reports Tuesday.
Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell reportedly told Israeli representatives last week that it was preferable that Clinton conclude an Israeli-Palestinian deal.
Bush has indicated that he will be far less personally involved in Middle East peace-making efforts than Clinton has been, and will delegate those responsibilities to Powell and the State Department.
Clinton has given Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat until Wednesday to respond to a set of bridging proposals he presented over the weekend. The president hopes an affirmative response from both leaders will help him clinch a deal by his self-imposed deadline of January 10.
Barak has tentatively agreed, although he wants to hear Arafat's response; the PA leader has said that the proposals don't go far enough.
Clinton presented the ideas in a meeting with the two sides on Saturday evening. They dealt with the thorniest outstanding issues - Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements in disputed territories, and final borders between Israel and a Palestinian entity.
Barak said Monday night the concessions Israel is being called upon to make to achieve an agreement with the Palestinian would be "as difficult as hell for us emotionally."
Nevertheless, he acknowledged, if the Palestinians agree to the proposals, then Israel's refusal to discuss Washington's ideas would bring about international retribution.
"It will be very difficult to refuse to discuss Clinton's proposals if the other side accepts them," Barak said. "That would exact of Israel too great an international price if everyone agrees - Arafat, Europe - and just we refuse," he added.
Arafat said Monday that the Palestinians "still have to thoroughly review the American suggestions."
He told reporters that some of the proposals "were much less" than what were offered at the Camp David summit this summer. That meeting collapsed over the issues of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendents.
"There are a lot of obstacles," he said.
Other PA leaders sounded even more pessimistic.
The West Bank leader of Arafat's Fatah faction, Marwan Barghouti, who has helped to lead three months of violent protests and terrorism, said Israel had agreed to further concessions under pressure from the intifada (uprising). However, he said the compromises had not gone far enough.
"We can't sign this kind of an agreement," Barghouti said in an interview on Israeli television. "The intifada will continue and will be escalated in the next weeks."
Concessions
Fending off Israeli accusations that he intends to give up the Temple Mount and divide Jerusalem, Barak said repeatedly during a television interview Monday night that negotiators would "do nothing to impair the affinity of the Jewish people" to the Temple Mount.
According to emerging reports, Clinton suggested that the Palestinians maintain control over the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) above ground, where two significant mosques are located. Israel, meanwhile, would be the sovereign under the mount, where the ruins of two successive biblical Jewish temples are buried.
Such a suggestion is anathema to many Israelis and Jews around the world, whom view the area as the focal point of Israel's historic relationship with God.
They and Barak's political opposition have accused the prime minister of being prepared to divide Jerusalem - something he swore in his election campaign never to do.
"I am not dividing Jerusalem," an emotional Barak shouted at the television interviewer when pressed on the issue. "I am going to make a determined attempt to put an end to the conflict!"
PA negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo rejected the idea of two-tiered sovereignty idea, calling it a verbal trick.
He said the Palestinians will also reject an agreement that does not resolve the plight of million of Palestinians claiming to be refugees and their descendents. They will also reject the idea of allowing Jewish communities to remain on some six per cent of disputed territory.
Israel has expressed a willingness to hand over some 95 per cent of the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in a final agreement.
It has already turned over about 40 per cent of the land, which the Jewish people deem their eternal biblical inheritance, to full or partial PA control. More than 90 per cent of the Palestinians now live under PA civil administration.
The reported concessions would enable Barak to annex the territory on which around 80 per cent of Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are located, in exchange for a piece of sovereign Israeli territory near the Gaza Strip. The deal would mean the displacement of some 50,000 Israelis.
Israeli radio said Tuesday Clinton had told the sides that he was willing to accept only "minor changes" in his bridging proposals.
Informed sources said Clinton told the Palestinians if they insisted on the "right of return" for all refugees, there would be no agreement.