Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Monday that he had set a new precondition for starting peace talks with the Palestinians. Israeli media had widely quoted Netanyahu as telling George Mitchell, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East, last week that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state before peace negotiations can resume.
Netanyahu's office issued a statement Monday, saying "recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people" was "a matter of substance and principle" for his new government.
Without such recognition, no progress toward a final peace treaty would be impossible, it said, but added:
"However, the prime minister has never set this as a pre-condition for the opening of negotiations and dialogue with the Palestinians."
Last week's Israeli media reports had angered the Palestinians.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that Egypt and Jordan had never been asked to recognize Israel's Jewish character when they signed peace treaties with it in 1979 and 1994 respectively.
"Netanyahu's new 'condition' serves no other purpose than to stall progress towards negotiations," Erekat charged in a written statement issued by his office Friday.
He noted that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had already recognized Israel.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat did so in an historic letter to late Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin, in which he wrote: "The PLO recognizes the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security."
The September 9, 1993 letter - sent days before the signing of the Oslo interim peace accord - also declared those articles in the PLO Covenant which denied Israel's right to exist "inoperative and no longer valid."
It did not recognize Israel's Jewish character, however. Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert, who handed power to Netanyahu last month following February 10 elections, had also demanded that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, although he had not made this a pre-condition for starting peace negotiations.
Olmert resumed such negotiations in December 2007, after a seven-year freeze in the peace process. But the talks were frozen again when he resigned amid corruption allegations and Israel started an election campaign late last year.
