Palestinian journalists close their ears and cover their faces after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas during a protest against Jewish settlements by Palestinian and foreign activists in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, near the city of Hebron and the settlement of Karmi Tsour, on Saturday (AFP photo by Hazem Bader)No talks until Israel halts settlements - PLO
RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Direct talks with Israel will not resume unless it halts the building of Jewish settlements on occupied land, the Palestinian leadership said on Saturday.
US-backed peace talks, launched a month ago in Washington, were plunged into crisis this week by the end of a 10-month Israeli moratorium on new settlement building in the West Bank. Israel has said it will not extend the freeze.
“The resumption of talks requires tangible steps, the first of them a freeze on settlements,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official, said after a meeting of the body’s executive committee in Ramallah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have held three rounds of face-to-face negotiations since September 2.
“The Palestinian leadership holds Israel responsible for obstructing the negotiations,” added Abed Rabbo. Abbas, head of the PLO, chaired the meeting.
The end of the settlement freeze had been flagged as an early stumbling block facing US President Barack Obama’s attempt to reach a Middle East peace deal within a year. Israel carried out the freeze under US pressure.
Abbas had said he would pull out of direct talks if Israel did not extend the freeze. The PLO statement said the Palestinians would discuss their next steps with the Arab League’s peace process committee at a meeting on October 8 in Libya.
“The Palestinian calculation is that the Americans will continue their efforts to try to bring about a formula that may be acceptable to the Palestinian side,” said George Giacaman, a political scientist at Birzeit University near Ramallah.
“I would not say that the process has ended. The American administration will continue pursuing the matter.”
Palestinians say the growth of the settlements, on land Israel has occupied since 1967, will render impossible the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the stated goal of the peace talks.
About 500,000 Jews have settled on territory where the Palestinians hope to establish their state with East Jerusalem as its capital. To Israel, the West Bank is “Judea and Samaria”, where the Jews trace their biblical past.
Netanyahu, whose coalition government is dominated by pro-settlement parties including his own Likud, has said he will not extend the construction moratorium, which expired on Monday.
An official quoted Netanyahu on Friday as saying it had not been easy to freeze construction for the past 10 months and that he had lived up to his commitments to the Palestinians, the United States and the international community.
“Now I expect the Palestinians to show some flexibility,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying. “Everyone knows that measured and restrained building in Judea and Samaria in the coming year will have no influence on the peace map.”
Obama’s envoy George Mitchell shuttled between Abbas and Netanyahu for two days this week. The sides agreed to keep talking via Mitchell, the way they had communicated before the launch of the direct talks.
“So far, efforts have reached a dead end,” Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Abbas, said on his way out of the PLO meeting. Abbas had informed Mitchell of the Palestinian position during their meeting on Friday, he said.
“There will be no negotiations in the shadow of continued settlement,” Abu Rudeina said.
| Mitchell due in Amman Sunday CAIRO (AFP) - US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in Cairo on Saturday as part of a regional tour aimed at saving fledgling direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, the official MENA news agency reported. Mitchell is scheduled to meet foreign ministry officials during his short visit, it said. He arrived from Qatar where he held talks with officials and is due to travel to Amman on Sunday. Mitchell and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton had shuttled between Jerusalem and Ramallah on Friday in a bid to save the peace talks which were launched at the beginning of September. The US envoy met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah as he sought to break the deadlock over Jewish settlements. |
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