JERUSALEM: Israel will not bow to pressure from Washington to halt settlement activity in the West Bank even for a temporary period, a minister from the governing Likud party said on Sunday.
“The prime minister made it clear in our meeting that there are no understandings and no commitments on the issue of a freeze of construction in the West Bank, not even a temporary one,” Yuli Edelstein told AFP.
“We must not reach such a situation,” the minister for information and diaspora affairs from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party added ahead of a Cabinet meeting.
The remarks came a day before a meeting in London between Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US Middle East envoy George Mitchell amid friction over the settlement issue between the two close allies.
The White House has repeatedly demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank in order to relaunch peace talks with the Palestinians, who have refused to meet Netanyahu without a complete freeze.
Netanyahu has said his government will not allow new settlements to be built but that the "natural growth" of existing settlements will continue.
The roadmap agreement, adopted by world powers in 2003 and to which Israel is a signatory, requires a complete freeze of all settlement activity, including natural growth, and the dismantling of all settlements built after March 2001.
Barak said he and Mitchell would explore “how to translate the roadmap, which Israel has adopted with some reservations and understandings, into a common way that is agreed upon by us, the United States and other sides.”
Barak said on Sunday he hopes to reach a “wider understanding” on regional peace when he meets President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy. Monday's meeting will be Barak's second with Mitchell in less than a week.
Barak said the goal of his meeting would be “to work toward a wider understanding between us and the US... and translate it into a shared path acceptable to us, to the US and to the other sides, to make progress on the diplomatic process with the Palestinians, and to opening a door to further moves.” Barak made no mention of the dispute over settlement construction, the issue that is expected to dominate Monday's discussions.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the fate of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants should be the subject of negotiations, and called for a full settlement freeze.
“We see the continuous settlement expansion as illegal and it must be stopped,” he said. On Sunday, Netanyahu said he had created a “national consensus around the term 'two states for two peoples.” “The consensus is first of all that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and that also means that the problem of the refugees will be solved outside the borders of the state of Israel, and that Israel needs and will receive defensible borders that also include full demilitarization of the Palestinian area,” he said.
