WASHINGTON: Talks between President Barack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas faced new complications yesterday as Israel flatly rejected a US and Palestinian demand that the Jewish state stop settlement construction in the West Bank.
An end to settlements is a top priority for Abbas as he sat down with Obama yesterday afternoon.
Obama, in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, told the Israeli leader that his government must stop putting up or expanding Jewish housing in the West Bank, land the Palestinians want for a state separate from Israel — the so-called two-state solution.
In the Obama meeting, Netanyahu refused to commit to ending settlement activity and would not sign on to the two-state solution, even though previous Israeli governments had accepted that as part of the so-called “road map” that would guide peace negotiations.
The Israeli government’s blunt rejection of the call for ending settlements was issued after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton restated the US position on Wednesday.
Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions,” Clinton said. “We think it is in the best interests (of the peace process) that settlement expansion cease. That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly ... And we intend to press that point.” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said yesterday that “normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue.” He confirmed that this meant construction will continue in existing settlements.
Top Palestinian officials traveling with Abbas said he was working to repackage a 2002 Arab peace initiative that called for exchange of Arab land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war in exchange for normalized relations with Arab countries.
Obama’s meeting with Abbas is the third of four key sessions the administration had planned as the president tries to reinvigorate the push for Middle East peace, an accord that has eluded American leaders, the Israelis and their Arab neighbors for more than half a century.
Obama has made brokering peace in that region a top priority but has found Netanyahu a particularly recalcitrant partner. Jordan’s King Abdallah opened the round of visits by Middle East leaders on April 21. Talks with President Hosni Mubarak, originally scheduled for Tuesday, were postponed after the unexpected death of the Egyptian leader’s grandson. The two leaders now plan to meet June 4 in Cairo, where Obama plans to deliver a major speech to the Muslim world. On his way to Egypt, Obama plans to meet Wednesday in Saudi Arabia with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.
Abbas is very weak politically, having lost control of the Gaza Strip in a violent takeover by Hamas.
