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Israeli settlements 'a problem': US

A Palestinian security forces officer scuffles with a female supporter of the Liberation Party during a demonstration in Hebron on Tuesday. PHOTO: AP

The US called Israeli settlement building 'a problem" on Tuesday as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began fresh talks in her uphill push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal this year.

The State Department voiced displeasure at Israel’s latest plans to build new Jewish settlements after Rice met Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for discussions that also covered Iran and its suspected pursuit of nuclear arms.

Rice later sat down with Ahmed Qurei, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, ahead of three-way talks with him and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who leads the Israeli negotiating team, yesterday afternoon.

Rice said she would work as hard as possible to help the two sides strike a deal this year but said “nobody should underestimate the difficulty of doing that.”

In addition to seeking a peace deal, Rice is trying to hold Israel and the Palestinians to the 2003 “road map” plan in which Israel agreed to halt all settlement activity and the Palestinians to crack down on violence against Israelis.

An Israeli Defense Ministry committee has approved building 20 housing units in Maskiot, an abandoned military base in the Jordan Valley that is outside the major West Bank settlement blocs that Israel plans to keep under any peace deal.

Qurei described the plan as a sign of Israeli bad faith.

Barak said Israel regarded the construction as justified, but noted that committee’s approval was a procedural step and that the project was at an early stage.

Barak, who also met US Defense Secretary Robert Gates during his visit, said he told US officials that Israel views Iran as “a major threat to the stability of the whole world and to any conceivable world order.”

Meanwhile, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli gunfire during a confrontation between troops and stone-throwers in a West Bank village on Tuesday, medics and witnesses said.

The boy, Ahmed Moussa, was killed in the West Bank village of Naalin. He was killed by a shot to the forehead, according to medics and a reporter who saw his body at Ramallah Hospital.

Also on Tuesday, an Israeli battalion commander was placed on 10 days of leave for his alleged role in the shooting of a bound, blindfolded Naalin protester on July 7. The protester was lightly injured, suffering a bruised toe.

In the northern West Bank city of Nablus, meanwhile, a well-known dissident was released a day after sweeping detention raids by security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abdel Sattar Qassem, a political science professor and frequent government critic, said he was not interrogated but saw other detainees who appeared to have been beaten in the Nablus lockup.

Qassem said he spent a night in prison with some 60 other detainees. He said he saw a Hamas member of the Nablus city council with his clothes ripped, and said other detainees bore signs of beatings.

Also on Tuesday, in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian Authority forces broke up a protest held by the Liberation Party, an Islamic group that calls for the establishment of a pan-Muslim state.

Hundreds of women in headscarves and robes marched alongside a few dozen men marched down a main street. They waved their party’s black flag and shouted slogans against the Abbas government.

“Authority of Spies!” the crowd chanted, “Infidels!” Security forces fired in the air and arrested some of the men.
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