St. Cloud Times · St. Cloud, Minnesota · 15 May 1998
CP-1998-005
No agreement reached on West Bank pullout
Netanyahu vows he won't establish Palestine state, redivide Jerusalem
Associated Press, Washington
Transcribed from the clipping
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he probably will make concessions to reach an agreement with the Palestinians over the West Bank, but not at the risk of his country’s security.
Netanyahu, taking a hard line Thursday night after his two-day talks with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended without a breakthrough, pledged never to agree to establish a Palestinian state or to redivide Jerusalem.
With Israeli officials saying no agreement was reached on any of the difficult issues, including how much territory Israel would relinquish on the West Bank, the Clinton administration seemed to have suffered a foreign policy setback.
‘The Palestinians should have all of the powers to run their lives, but not the powers of statehood,’ Netanyahu told an American Jewish Committee dinner. He said Israel had determined which areas of the West Bank that it could withdraw its troops from safely and that peace was ‘within our reach.’
But an agreement to reopen negotiations with the Palestinian Authority after 15 months of stalemate continued to elude the Israeli leader and Albright, although they directed aides to keep meeting in the search for an acceptable formula. ‘There is no agreement yet on the issues that were discussed,’ said Gadi Baltiansky, the Israeli Embassy spokesman.
‘But they continue to be discussed.’ Albright’s spokesman, James P. Rubin, said: ‘We do have sufficient reason to continue serious work.’ But he added: ‘It is hard to be optimistic.’”
Context added by this archive
The formula printed plainly in 1998: all the powers to run their lives, but not the powers of statehood. No Palestinian is quoted in the story.
Cite this clipping
"No agreement reached on West Bank pullout," St. Cloud Times, 15 May 1998, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1998-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1998-005
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
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