Bill to Block Negotiations on Yerushalayim, Refugees

That’s why the Likud MK is proposing legislation to block the government’s chief representative to the Palestinians from negotiating the status of  Yerushalayim and the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, reports The Jerusalem Post.

“I don’t trust the people running the negotiations or [Justice Minister] Tzipi Livni, … who hasn’t brought any results,” Regev told Army Radio Tuesday. “I don’t even know if the prime minister trusts her … She doesn’t decide policy.”

Regev’s bill, the latest attempt on the right to head off a perceived tilting toward concessions, is scheduled to be brought to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday.

If it passes, it will require at least 61 MKs to approve in advance any negotiations on Yerushalayim or the status of Palestinian refugees.

The move follows Regev’s recent proposal to annex the Jordan Valley, which has been opposed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and tossed back and forth by coalition MKs.

An earlier bill authored by MK Rabbi Yaacov Litzman (UTJ) to required a two-thirds majority of the Knesset before negotiations on Yerushalayim was voted down.

MKs on the left are having their say as well. Michal Rozin of Meretz suggested that “Miri Regev propose the bill she really wants, outlawing any peace treaty or diplomatic agreement between Israel and the Palestinians that she didn’t sign herself.”

On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted down a bill by MK Merav Michaeli (Labor) that would prohibit any construction over the 1949 armistice lines.

Another initiative rejected by the ministers, nicknamed the “two-state bill” and proposed by MK Hilik Bar (Labor), would not allow any unilateral annexation and specifies that the final status of territory in Yehuda and Shomron and Gaza could only be decided in a treaty for a two-state solution.

This article appeared in print on page 38 of the January 8th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.