RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday called on Israel to halt settlement expansion and said he would not start from scratch in peace talks with the Jewish state’s next government.
“All future dialogue between us and Israel has to be preceded by a total stop of settlement activity (and) the lifting of roadblocks,” Abbas said, referring to the hundreds of barriers scattered across the West Bank.
“If the settlements don’t stop, all negotiations will be futile and useless,” he told reporters after holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
When asked about last week’s Israeli parliamentary elections, which put the right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu on track to become the next prime minister, Abbas said that “to begin from scratch is out of the question.”
The hawkish Netanyahu put the brakes on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks when he was prime minister in 1996-1999, in part by authorizing major new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Lavrov for his part, reconfirmed Moscow’s intention to hold an international Middle East peace conference during the first half of 2009 that it hopes will stimulate the dormant negotiations. “We will continue our efforts with the aim of restarting the peace process, which will require both parties to respect their obligations under the roadmap, including a stop to violence and to settlement activity,” he said.
Meanwhile, Abbas’ government said yesterday it had taken bank loans to pay its workers overdue salaries. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, could not pay salaries on time this month after his government diverted funds to compensate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip whose homes were lost in last month’s Israeli war against the enclave’s Hamas rulers.
Social affairs minister, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, said that employees’ salaries would be paid today and that the government would pay back the bank loans with cash from international donors.
“Salaries will be paid tomorrow. We received financial assistance from local banks and we hope that financial aid from donors will be transferred soon to pay back the loans,” Al-Habbash said. Government workers had declared a strike, citing Fayyad’s inability to pay wages, at the beginning of the month.
Fayyad, who runs a government largely dependent on foreign aid, wants to take the lead in costly reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip to sideline Hamas.
The Islamist group, which won a 2006 Palestinian election and seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’ Fatah forces 18 months later, has also started making partial payments to Palestinians who lost their homes in the war.
Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s three-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip. About 5,000 homes were destroyed, along with many roads, bridges and government buildings. Reconstruction is estimated to cost at least $2 billion.
Fayyad got the money to begin paying Palestinians in the Gaza Strip earlier this month when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert approved the transfer of 175 million shekels ($43 million) from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.
