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Israel pledges to remove 50 roadblocks

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after her latest push for peace secured a pledge to remove some roadblocks in the occupied West Bank.

Rice also held three-way talks with top Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and she was scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan, for the second time in two days.

The US official, on her second visit to the region in less than a month, on Sunday obtained an Israeli promise to remove 50 army roadblocks in the West Bank.

The move is expected to improve the daily lives of Palestinians and help reinvigorate Middle East peace talks.

SETTLEMENT ACTIVITY

But a new report that some 500 buildings are being constructed in Jewish settlements in the West Bank highlighted the difficulties facing Rice as she tries to speed up the faltering talks.

An international roadmap to Middle East peace, revived at the US-sponsored Annapolis conference last November, calls on Israel to freeze settlement construction.

"Not a single project was frozen," the Peace Now watchdog group said in a report, even though continued settlement activity is seen as one of the major hurdles in the peace process.

The report contained little new information on Israel's settlement activities on land Palestinians want for a state but pointed to the government's policy which the group described as a "slap in the face" to peace efforts.

Peace Now said Israel was building in 101 settlements and not a single construction project had been frozen.

But Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad hailed the promised removal of roadblocks and other measures which Israel announced on Sunday.

"We accept these measures as acts to improve the people's lives and to strengthen the ability to work and build our state," he said after a three-way meeting with Rice and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The measure will affect just a fraction of the more than 500 roadblocks and checkpoints the army operates across the West Bank, but Israel said it will examine the possibility of removing further roadblocks by next month.

The Israeli defense ministry also announced that Palestinian security forces loyal to Abbas would deploy 700 police in the Jenin area of the northern West Bank, although overall security responsibility would remain in Israeli hands.

Israel likewise has agreed to ease travel restrictions for 1,500 Palestinians and increase Palestinian work permits in Israel in a bid to rehabilitate the Palestinian economy.

RICE'S RHETORIC

"What we have to do is to have meaningful progress toward a better life for the Palestinian people, for economic viability for Palestinians even as we move for the establishment of a state," Rice said.

On Sunday she shuttled from Israel to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II and Abbas, after kicking off her mission on Saturday with a working dinner with Olmert.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were revived in November after a seven-year hiatus, with both sides vowing to try to reach agreement by the end of the year.

But negotiations have since made little concrete progress, hampered by Israeli settlement activity, a deadly Palestinian attack on a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem and Gaza bloodshed.

The Israeli prime minister said last week he does not envisage the possibility of anything more than an outline agreement by next year and plans continued to include settlement expansion.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital, a claim that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza.
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