The United States on Wednesday sought goodwill gestures from Israel to persuade
Palestinians to return to peace talks even as new settlement expansion
plans threatened further strains between Washington and its close ally.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who held a low-key meeting at the White House on Tuesday
with President Barack Obama, was engaged in an all-day effort to ease
the dispute with Washington before he was to leave for Israel.
Palestinians have demanded a complete settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu
has cautioned that accepting their terms for reviving negotiations, in
the format of U.S.-mediated, indirect talks, could put peace efforts on
hold for another year.
"The president asked the prime minister to take steps to build
confidence for proximity talks so that progress can be made toward
comprehensive peace," White
House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, without
elaborating. "There are areas of agreement and there are areas of
disagreement."
As U.S. and Israeli officials continued negotiations apparently aimed at
reaching a deal before Netanyahu was due to fly home, Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell held
talks with the prime minister at his hotel.
U.S. officials have tried to get Israel to agree to suspend further
Jewish home construction
in East Jerusalem and to consent to discuss core issues such as borders
and the status of Jerusalem
in the U.S.-sponsored "proximity" negotiations.
Undeterred by turbulence in U.S.-Israeli relations, Israel earlier on
Wednesday confirmed plans for a further expansion of the Jewish presence
in East Jerusalem, with more building approved.
Gibbs said U.S. officials were seeking clarification after a Jerusalem
city official, in a move that angered Palestinians, said final approval
was given to develop a flashpoint neighborhood from which Palestinians
were evicted last year.
GETTING RELATIONS BACK ON TRACK
American and Israeli officials have sought to get relations back on
track after a separate plan to build 1,600 homes for Jews in Ramat
Shlomo, a settlement on West
Bank land that Israel annexed to Jerusalem after a 1967 war, was
announced two weeks ago during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
The housing dispute touched off the worst diplomatic rift between
Washington and Israel since Obama took office last year.
Netanyahu, who heads a coalition that contains pro-settler parties,
including his own, said he was blindsided by bureaucrats. But he also
made clear he had no intention of curbing Jewish construction anywhere
in a holy city Israel claims as its capital.
Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they
hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have called
Netanyahu and his settlement policy obstacles to peace.
In a sign of lingering tensions, the Obama administration withheld from
Netanyahu some of the usual trappings of a White House visit on Tuesday. Press
coverage of the Oval
Office talks was barred, and the leaders made no public
statements afterward.
As part of the housing
project that made headlines on Wednesday, 20 units are due to be
built at the site of a defunct hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood
of East Jerusalem, an area where a U.S. millionaire has been buying
property for settlers.
Nir Hefez, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said in a statement the decision
to issue building permits was first made last year and that "Jews and
Arabs can buy and sell freely private property and homes in all the
city."
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
0 comments:
Post a Comment