RAMALLAH: Hundreds of Israeli occupiers on Tuesday started planting trees near the West Bank settlement of Beit Aryeh, to the west of Ramallah.
Elias Azar, the head of Aboud municipal council, said that the occupiers “planted the trees on agricultural lands between the settlements of Beit Aryeh and Ofarim.” Azar told Arab News that “the lands are owned by Aboud farmers.”
The officials said that “planting of trees in lands surrounding Beit Aryeh and Ofarim is a move aimed at expropriating them for the expansion of the two settlements and for the construction of the separation wall in the area.”
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planted trees in three West Bank major settlements and called on Israelis to plant trees in settlements saying “these places will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”
The issue of settlements is one of the thorniest issues the stall the resumption of peace talks between Palestinian Authority and Israel.
The peace talks stopped when Israel launched a military offensive into the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and efforts to restart them have failed due to the continuation of Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A senior Israeli government source said late Monday that the Israeli government has no intention of acceding to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ call for a freeze of all construction in West Bank settlements and in East Jerusalem for three months, in order to resume direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The official was quoted by the Israeli Radio as saying that “we are not going to accept the Palestinian position on Jerusalem as a condition for entering the talks.”
Abbas, in an interview that appeared Sunday on The Guardian Web site, said he would be prepared to resume face-to-face talks if Israel froze all construction for three months and accepted the June 4, 1967, borders as the basis for land swaps.
“These are not preconditions, they are requirements in the road map,” he said. “If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don’t want a political solution.”
According to The Guardian, Abbas “may be poised” to accept US Mideast envoy George Mitchell’s idea of “proximity talks,” and the Palestinian president was expected to give Mitchell his answer on Thursday after holding discussions with key Arab and European leaders. Proximity talks, whereby Mitchell would shuttle between the Israeli and Palestinian delegations as a way to eventually enable direct negotiations, is believed to be something that Netanyahu would accept as well.
