Israel told it must make urgent peace concessions

Fort Worth News.Net
Sunday 14th March, 2010

The Israeli prime minister was strongly rebuked on Friday by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who angrily questioned him on Israel's refusal to back down on settlement expansion.

She told him that the US was totally unsatisfied with Israeli responses over Jewish settlement expansion in disputed East Jerusalem.

Last Tuesday the Israel Interior Ministry made an announcement on the approval of new settlements as US Vice President Joe Biden was landing in Israel.

Ms Clinton described the timing of the announcement as an insult.

She told the PM he was sending highly negative signals at a time when the US is trying to re-establish the Middle East peace process.

After the call, Mr Netanyahu held an urgent meeting with his Cabinet and has since told the US, through Israel's chief Washington ambassador, that the announcement was made without his knowledge, and the timing was unintentional.

He said he had apologised to Biden while he was in Israel and had hoped the matter was at an end.

It is believed the Israeli weekend Cabinet meeting was conducted in a business-as-usual manner, with Netanyahu calling for calm and instructing his ministers not to publicly discuss the matter.

He is reported to have said: “First of all, I suggest that we don’t get carried away, that we calm down. What did my friend, Bennie Begin, say? ‘I was a youth and have matured.’ We know how to deal with these situations with equanimity, responsibly and with seriousness.”

But since the Biden incident, Israel has been left with a growing sense that Washington will use the issue to squeeze diplomatic concessions from Mr Netanyahu, including the cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo building project and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners.

Ramat Shlomo is a controversial construction project which involves the construction of 1600 settler houses has been slammed by the Obama administration,

Washington has told Netanyahu it wants to see the release of some Palestinian prisoners, to be used as a confidence building measure for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

US Mideast envoy George Mitchell arrives in Israel later this week to try to get Israel to immediately deal with core issues in the negotiations, rather than the stalling technical issues that Israel has demanded.

Obama’s top adviser David Axelrod has expanded on the Biden trip, telling ABC’s This Week the Israeli settlement announcement was an affront and an insult.

He said: “What it did was it made more difficult a very difficult process and seemed calculated to undermine the proximity talks. Israel is a strong and special ally. The bonds run deep. But for just that very reason, this was not the right way to behave. That was expressed by the secretary of state, as well as the vice president.”

When asked about how the US had approached the matter with the Israelis, Axelrod said he was not willing to discuss diplomatic talks but said he thought they understood clearly why the US is upset.

Middle-East peace talks are now on hold, with the Palestinians saying they will not return to the negotiating table until Israel rescinds the decision for new construction in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Egypt has called on the international community to continue pressuring Israel over the issue.

On the weekend, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki was quoted as saying international criticism should continue so that Washington is able to understand that the Israeli government is not working to promote peace.

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