Abbas: Palestinians to leave peace talks

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said his side would walk away from deadlocked exploratory peace talks with Israel Thursday and weigh its next moves.

"If we demarcate the borders, we can return to negotiations, but the Israelis do not want demarcation of borders," Palestine news agency WAFA quoted Abbas as saying.

The Palestinian National Authority says it wants Israel to accept, as a basis for negotiations, Israel's borders before the 1967 Six-Day War that led to Israel's West Bank and Gaza occupation. It also wants Israel to halt Jewish settlement construction -- deemed illegal under international law -- in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

U.S. President Barack Obama called last May for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the creation of a non-militarized Palestinian state based on Israel's prewar borders, modified by land swaps -- a proposal Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu immediately rejected, calling the borders "indefensible'' and counter to earlier U.S. commitments.

Netanyahu urged Palestinian negotiators to return to the talks without preconditions, rejecting the Palestinian demand to halt settlement building.

"They would be making a mistake if they are looking for excuses to leave the table," an Israeli official quoted by the British newspaper The Independent said. "Walking away ... is not going to solve anything."

Israeli and Palestinian representatives met five times this month in Amman as part of a Jordanian effort to advance a plan by international mediators to resume formal peace talks.

The plan, presented in September by the Quartet -- the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- set a Thursday deadline for both sides to present proposals on borders and security.

Israel said the Palestinian-approved deadline was "artificial" to create an "artificial crisis," The Independent said.

"Israel chose to [promote] settlements over peace," a Palestinian official quoted by The Independent said.

After meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah in Amman, Abbas said Wednesday a decision on the next steps would be made at an Arab League foreign ministers meeting Feb. 4.

Options the authority may consider include reviving its U.N. statehood bid and asking the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes during the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian-controlled Gaza strip in 2008, The Independent said.

The last top-level talks took place in Washington in September 2010 but collapsed within weeks when Israel's partial moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank expired.