latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-1208-mideast-peace-20101208,0,3711309.story
latimes.com U.S. dropping demand that Israel freeze settlement building, official says U.S. negotiators no longer believe such a move is the best way to advance peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the official says. The three parties are to meet next week. By Christi Parsons and Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times December 8, 2010 Reporting from Washington and JerusalemThe Obama administration is dropping its demand that Israel reimpose a temporary freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, a U.S. official said Tuesday, a setback for President Obama and the Mideast peace talks he is seeking to push forward. The change in direction comes in advance of meetings of U.S., Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Washington next week. U.S. negotiators no longer believe that insisting on a settlement freeze is the best way to proceed, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But it was not immediately clear what other proposals the Obama administration might put forward. News reports said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would outline the new U.S. strategy in a speech on Friday. The decision is likely to anger Palestinians, who have demanded an end to settlement construction as a condition for continuing direct negotiations that were relaunched in September. Obama is heavily invested in the Mideast peace issue, seeing progress there as key to improving U.S. relations with the Muslim world. He faced loud criticism from Israel and its supporters for advocating the settlement freeze during the first months of his administration. At Obama's urging, the two sides launched face-to-face talks this fall, but they fell apart over the settlement issue. A temporary freeze on construction in disputed territory expired in late September, and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to renew it. The U.S. has been pressing Israel to renew the freeze for three months, a period during which it hoped to negotiate the final borders of a Palestinian state. U.S. officials offered incentives including 20 stealth fighter jets worth $3 billion and a promise to veto anti-Israeli resolutions at the U.N. Security Council, including a possible effort by Palestinians to gain support for a unilateral declaration of statehood. Under the U.S. proposal, once both sides agreed to the borders, Israel could have continued building in areas that would become part of Israel. Netanyahu faced strong opposition when he brought the plan to his Cabinet last month. The Israeli government has not acted on it, and it is unclear whether the prime minister had the support to get it passed. In the meantime, settler groups resumed construction in the West Bank. Separately, Israeli authorities announced that they would build more housing on disputed land in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will be the capital of their independent state. Although the U.S. opposed such construction in East Jerusalem, it has not been included in the construction freezes. Some analysts have said that the announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem reflects an Israeli calculation that Obama is politically weaker after the Democrats' drubbing in November elections. On Wednesday, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, told Palestinian media that the U.S. decision "was a declaration of the failure of U.S. efforts" to get a settlement freeze. "Now the picture is very clear," Abed-Rabbo said, describing the U.S. move as "an attempt for more stalling." Israeli media said Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a committee of the parliament, or Knesset, that talks with U.S. officials over a settlement freeze had stopped because Washington was distracted by the WikiLeaks controversy and its need to focus on the confrontation with North Korea. But Barak said that in the absence of negotiations, Israel faces the danger of becoming increasingly isolated internationally. Israel is concerned with the success of one Palestinian tactic: persuading countries to recognize an independent Palestinian state within borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East War. The move has little practical effect, but Brazil and Argentina have done it recently. They probably will be joined by Uruguay next month. Israel's Haaretz daily quoted sources in Netanyahu's office as saying efforts to impose a new settlement freeze broke down because of Palestinian insistence that the talks turn quickly to the issue of setting final borders. Israeli reaction largely split along well-defined political lines. "The lesson of this is that the sky doesn't fall if Israel stands its ground and doesn't give in to every dictate," said Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council, a settler group. Ilan Gilon, a lawmaker from the left-wing Meretz party, complained that the government was "dominated by the pro-settlement lobby." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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