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Israel to hand over Jerusalem-area villages soon

JERUSALEM: Israel intends to hand over villages near Jerusalem to full Palestinian control soon, state-owned media reported, stirring the ire of Israeli hardliners who oppose any concessions near the holy city.

The Jerusalem-area villages of Anata and Abediya are part of a handover map drawn in consultation with Palestinian officials, government-owned Channel One Television said late on Monday.

Israel has resisted a key Palestinian demand that areas near Jerusalem be part of a promised but postponed withdrawal from a further 6.1 percent of the West Bank.

Israel Radio said the handover, slated for January 20 under interim peace deals, could take place as early as next week.

There was no official confirmation of the report, but a political source said the map was likely to be shown to Prime Minister Ehud Barak's inner cabinet for debate on Wednesday.

"On Sunday the map will be presented to the full cabinet for approval. If approved, the pullout will take place next week," the radio said.

The response of Jewish settlers was swift and biting.

"Barak is casting a Palestinian ring of strangulation around the capital, and is partitioning Jerusalem," said Jewish settlement spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yossef.

Earlier, Barak told reporters there had been no change in Israeli policy regarding Jerusalem, whose Arab eastern half was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed as part of Israel's "eternal, indivisible capital".

"On the Jerusalem issue, our stance is unequivocal, determined, and will not change for the length of the talks -- Jerusalem, united, broad under our sovereignty, is the capital of Israel -- period."

Analysts say the solution is likely to take the form of Palestinian control of areas near the present Israeli-defined municipal limits, an arrangement that could afford Palestinians a compromise Jerusalem capital.

Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat agreed last week to resume negotiations on a final peace treaty that the Palestine Liberation Organisation broke off in February in the dispute over the shape of the delayed 6.1 percent handover.

The U.S.-mediated talks aim at a permanent peace treaty by mid-September, to cover such bedrock disputes as the fate of Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlers, and Jerusalem.

The talks are expected to resume in Washington after the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, which begins later this week.

As a further sign of progress, Israel said on Monday it would release more Palestinian prisoners "in the next few days".-Reuters