New Israeli plans to build near East Jerusalem show Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to resume peace talks, Palestinian
officials said.
“It’s time for the American administration to tell the world
that Israel holds the responsibility for the collapse of this peace process,”
chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. “Israel has chosen settlements
and not peace,” he told Reuters.
The United States has been trying to revive direct
negotiations between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but weeks of diplomacy have yet to yield a
breakthrough.
The Palestinians want Israel to halt all construction on
land where they aim to found an independent state, including areas in and
around Jerusalem captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Abbas and Netanyahu held three rounds of direct talks in
September but the Palestinians withdrew from the negotiations three weeks after
they started when Israel lifted restrictions on settlement building in the West
Bank.
Netanyahu had imposed the restrictions for 10 months. He has
faced strong opposition within his cabinet to any further curbs on settlement
building. His government is dominated by parties that support the settlers,
including his own rightist Likud.
Israel announced on Wednesday plans for 625 new homes in
Pisgat Zeev, which is built on West Bank land Israel annexed to its Jerusalem
municipality immediately after the 1967 war. “This Israeli signal shows that
they are not willing and not ready for any deal in order to resume the
negotiations,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas’s spokesman, told Reuters.
Israel sees Pisgat Zeev and other districts it has built in
and around Jerusalem since 1967 as part of its capital. The Palestinians regard
them as settlements, a view supported by the European Union.
Israel’s building in and around Jerusalem has strained its
ties with the United States this year. Washington says such building does not
help peace negotiations.
The United States has been in talks with Israel over a set
of incentives designed to produce another settlement freeze that would allow
the negotiations to resume.
The Palestinian officials said Israel’s new settlement
building plans amounted to a rejection of the US efforts.
Erekat said the United States should now recognize a state
of Palestine in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its
capital if it wished “to preserve the two-state solution.”
Referring to the Pisgat Zeev building plans, Abu Rdainah
said: “It looks like this is an Israeli message to the Palestinians and the
Americans that they are refusing any deal resuming the negotiations.”
