JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- With U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seeming to breath down their necks, Israeli and the Palestinian officials were reportedly nearing an agreement on opening the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Rice met Israeli and Palestinians leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah Monday, traveled to Jordan, but rather than proceed to South Korea was returning to Jerusalem, a U.S. diplomat confirmed.
Her return was an apparent effort to prod the sides to compromise and thus end a de facto closure of the Gaza Strip.
Israel evacuated that area in September ending a 38- year occupation but Gaza remains encircled. Israel borders it on the north and east, controls the sea to the west, and the airspace. The only other exit was south, to Egypt, but the border was usually closed because Israel insisted on getting a real-time transmission of pictures of the people seeking to enter the Gaza Strip. It demanded that to prevent terrorists from entering the strip but the Palestinians rejected the demand.
An Israeli defense official confirmed the parties were talking of establishing a joint control room for Israeli and Palestinian officials, and European Union monitors, who would get the pictures.
Some 1.3 million Palestinians are cramped in the small strip and opening the border to Egypt would clinch the Israeli withdrawal. Without an ability to move in and out of that area, Gaza is "a prison," the Quartet's Special Envoy, James Wolfensohn, said Monday.
Wolfensohn has been trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians to reach some agreement before they both get immersed in their respective parliamentary elections.
The Palestinian elections are due on Jan. 25 and Israeli elections may be held in March.
Wolfensohn Monday told the Israel Council on Foreign Relations the "next days, maybe the next hours are very important to see if we can ... get us to a certain level on (outstanding subjects)... and then maybe a chance to more forward."
Now there is an opportunity that may not last long, he argued.
The Quartet, comprising the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, in fact the entire world, he said, was willing to help advance peace. The Group of Eight leading industrial countries was willing to provide some $ 9 billion over three years to help the Palestinians establish a viable economy alongside Israel.
Wolfensohn maintained that on their merits, the issues he has been dealing with were not that difficult to settle.
"If there were no emotions and history this wouldn't be a difficult thing to solve," he said but the differences cannot be treated as theoretical problems.
Every time he made suggestions, he got counter arguments. "There is nothing like the Palestinian-Israeli issues, he said and sometimes wondered, "Why did I get into this thing?"
The six topics he sought to resolve were:
-- Access to and from the Palestinian territories that would be consistent with Israel's security needs.
-- How to link the West Bank with the Gaza Strip. Gaza is just six or seven percent of the Palestinian territory but more than a third of the population lives there.
"You need an appropriate link," he said. The parties were considering a "rail or busses, tunnels ... whatever can be done to move people."
-- Movement in the West Bank that constitutes 93 percent of the Palestinian territory. There are "some 320 mobility inhibitions" there he said, alluding to Israelis closure, roadblocks, earth mounds at entrances to villages. Without proper mobility "the West Bank is a pretty tough place to be," he said.
-- There is an agreement on the location of the projected Palestinian port but more negotiations are needed for repairing and opening the airport in the southern Gaza Strip.
-- The Israeli government agreed to pay for removing the rubble of the houses in the destroyed Gaza Strip settlements but talks are still needed to determine where exactly, in Egypt, that rubble can be dumped.
-- The greenhouses Israeli farmers left behind are functioning but the produce must be exported, be it to Israel, Jordan or other markets.
Wolfensohn said, "We've been discussing (these points) for 20 weeks and have yet to reach finality."
The Quartet is not trying to impose a solution. "I am not a king and not an emperor," he said.
" There is no sense of forcing; There is no sense of insisting; There is no sense of saying that we know better," Wolfensohn maintained.
In the past few months he has been telling Israelis and Palestinians: "You can try to reach an agreement in which case we'll be happy to help, or if you find the difficulties too great then I am very happy to go back and do other things."
Both sides should seize the opportunity, he stressed. The Israelis and Palestinians are, together, just 10 million to 11 million people in an Islamic region of 320 million, or a world of 6.2 billion people. There is a disproportionate interest in the area, he maintained.
At the moment the world is willing to help but if the sides procrastinate, the Quartet may not be around to help. It would be "very difficult" to retain a disproportionate interest in the next six to 12 months if the sides blow the opportunity, he argued.
"At this moment the world is willing to help at the highest level," Wolfensohn noted. If anyone doubted it, Rice in Jerusalem, Sunday, and British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in Tel Aviv Thursday strongly backed him.
"Now is the moment four you to decide," Wolfensohn told his listeners hat included Israelis, diplomats and several Palestinians including Finance Minister Salaam Fayaad.
"If you want to blow each other up, I have a nice house in Wyoming, and in New York and in Australia and I will watch with sadness what you're doing. If you ... try and make things move forward ... I'll be in it up to my ears in trying to help because I think it's worth doing but the fundamental decision that has to be made is not mine," he said.
