OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel's prime minister Sunday proposed nonstop, face-to-face talks with the Palestinian president until a peace agreement is reached – offering a possible way to advance talks that have stalled over the construction of Jewish settlements. Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal offers the appeal of leaders working together to make history, and it comes in response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' latest claim – made over the weekend in South America – that genuine talks could yield a deal within months. But the Palestinians showed little enthusiasm for Netanyahu's offer. Reached by The Associated Press in Brazil Sunday, Abbas reiterated his call for a settlement freeze. “If he does so, we can reach an agreement not in six months, but in two months,” he said. Abbas' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Netanyahu's offer amounted to little more than an empty declaration. He called on the Israeli leader to spell out a vision of peace, and specifically to commit to a near-complete withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In his comments Sunday, Netanyahu urged the Palestinians to turn their focus away from settlements and instead work with him on the broader issues needed to reach a final peace deal. He said he was ready to sit with Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, for “continuous direct one-on-one negotiations until white smoke is wafting,” an allusion to the Vatican's custom for announcing a new pope. “If Abu Mazen agrees to my proposal of directly discussing all the core issues, we will know very quickly if we can reach an agreement,” he said. Netanyahu did not spell out details, but his new approach would be based on the idea that all the outstanding issues would be on the table, as opposed to the Palestinian approach of demanding a settlement freeze and general agreement on borders before talks resume. Palestinian killed Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday, less than 48 hours after a female protester died after being tear-gassed. Palestinian officials condemned the two deaths, calling them part of a “dangerous escalation” by Israel. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Mohammed Daraghmeh, in his early twenties, was killed at around 8:00 A.M. (0600 GMT) at the Hamra checkpoint northeast of Nablus. The Israeli military confirmed that Daraghmeh was not armed with a knife, but said he entered an unauthorized lane in the checkpoint and was believed to have been holding a bottle. “He approached them, he was standing a few meters from them,” a military spokeswoman said. “They asked him to stop, he didn't answer,” she said, adding that the incident was under investigation. ‘Israel preparing for war' Israel's army chief told a US Congress delegation in late 2009 he was preparing for a large war in the Middle East, probably against Hamas or Hezbollah, leaked US diplomatic cables showed Sunday. “I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite,” Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying in a cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv. The document, dated Nov. 15, 2009, was quoted Sunday in Norwegian by Oslo-based daily Aftenposten, which said it had obtained WikiLeaks' entire cache of 251,187 leaked US Embassy cables. “The rocket threat against Israel is more serious than ever. That is why Israel is putting such emphasis on rocket defense,” Ashkenazi told the US delegation led by Democrat Ike Skelton, the cable showed. The army chief lamented that Iran has some 300 Shihab rockets that can reach Israel and stressed that the Jewish state would have only between 10 and 12 minutes warning in case of an attack. However, it was Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed the most acute threat, he cautioned.
