OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel is likely to offer Palestinians a state within temporary borders, the country's defense minister was quoted as saying Tuesday, detailing for the first time an emerging Israeli plan for breaking the deadlocked peace negotiations. Though the Palestinians repeatedly have rejected provisional statehood, Ehud Barak told The Wall Street Journal that Israel or the United States would have to give assurances that a full-fledged agreement on permanent statehood would follow. Barak also told the newspaper that Israel might seek an additional $20 billion in US military aid to help it deal with potential threats arising from the turmoil in the Arab world. While characterizing the popular upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the Gulf as “a historic earthquake” and “quite inspired,” Barak said Israel was worried that its top foes, Iran and Syria, “might be the last to feel the heat” of the revolts and that Egypt's new leaders might, under public pressure, back away from its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. “The issue of qualitative military aid for Israel becomes more essential for us, and I believe also more essential for you,” the newspaper quoted Barak as saying. “A strong, responsible Israel can become a stabilizer in such a turbulent region.” Israel already receives $3 billion in military aid a year from the US. Without making a “daring” peace offer, however, Israel cannot seek additional aid, Barak was quoted as saying. To that end, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to offer the Palestinians a state with temporary borders, he said. Only afterward, would the two sides would resolve key issues of the conflict, such as competing claims to Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, Barak added. Portion of West Bank Israel's prime minister declared Tuesday that his country must retain a strategic section of the West Bank under any future peace deal — a position unlikely to win Palestinians over to his reported plan to offer them a temporary state. In a rare visit to the occupied territory, Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Israel's security depends on maintaining a military presence in the Jordan Valley — a strip of West Bank land along the border with Jordan. Without troops there, Israel fears militants could smuggle weapons into the West Bank.
