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VOLUME 18: 1999-2001
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49. Foreign Ministry statement regarding Palestinian claims regarding redeployment, 16 November 1999.
On 10 November, the cabinet approved the plan for the second stage of FRD. A map was presented to Arafat the next day, but he rejected it. A meeting was held in Tel Aviv between Barak and Arafat on 14 November, but it failed to produce an agreement. Israel delayed the second stage of the FRD for reasons contained in the following statement:
Following Palestinian claims that the redeployment must be carried out with the agreement of both parties, and that Israel does not have the sole right to determine which territories will be transferred, the Israeli position is as follows:
1. In the agreements signed by both parties, there is no support for the Palestinian claim regarding the need to obtain agreement between Israel and the Palestinians regarding the location of territories from which Israel will redeploy. On the contrary, the agreements describe the redeployment as a process that Israel carries out unilaterally, in accordance with its own decision.
2. The Israeli position was approved in a letter by United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the parties following the signing of the Hebron Protocol. The Israeli and Palestinian sides approved the above letter's content in the Wye River Memorandum
3. Beyond the above statement, the Palestinian claim is not consistent with the sides' past practice. This practice shows that all redeployments were carried out following an Israeli decision regarding the location of the territories from which Israel was redeploying. The Palestinians did not make any protest in the past to this practice.
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