Jordan's King Abdullah, who visited Ramallah on Monday, conveyed to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a document from the European Union that includes a proposal for resuming negotiations with Israel, an Arab newspaper reported.
According to al-Quds al-Arabi, the proposal calls on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table even without a settlement construction freeze in exchange for an EU promise to support the Palestinian UN bid, if negotiations fail within the next year.
Palestinian sources quoted by the paper said that "the European initiative calls for the resumption of negotiations on the basis of the Quartet statement issued last September, without the Palestinian insistence on the freeze of settlement. This is in exchange for a promise by the European Union, including France and Britain, to support the application for UN membership of the State of Palestine within the 1967 territories in September 2012 if negotiations with Israel fail over the next year. "
The EU proposal for the resumption of negotiations asserts the settlement issue will be resolved through negotiations on the core issues of borders and security.
The resumption of negotiations will be conducted under the auspices of the Quartet.
The sources said that Abdullah and Abbas discussed how to strengthen the Palestinian position through the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian decision-making and the return of relations between them and Amman.
King Abdullah's visit to the West Bank was the first in a decade.
President Abbas is to hold power-sharing talks with Khaled Meshal of Hamas this week in Cairo to try to put an end to a four-year-old bitter division within the Palestinian movement.
Meshal, who is based in Damascus, the Syrian capital and has been barred from official visits to Jordan since 1999, has been invited in Amman next week.