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US easing stance on settlements to gain peace talks

Palestinian women rest near a section of Israel’s barrier at the Kalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday. The women were on their way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for Ramadan. PHOTO: AP

The Obama administration appears to be backing down on its insistence that Israel halt all settlement activity as a condition for restarting peace talks with the Palestinians.

While US officials insist their position on the matter has not changed, they are now hinting that a less blanket moratorium would be acceptable provided the Palestinians and Arab states agree.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Thursday that the US “position in these discussions remains unchanged,” but he added that the US would be flexible on pre-negotiation conditions for all the parties involved.

“We put forward our ideas, publicly and privately, about what it will take for negotiations to be restarted, but ultimately it’ll be up to the parties themselves, with our help, to determine whether that threshold has been met,” he said.

“Ultimately,” he said, “this is not a process by which the United States will impose conditions on Israel, on the Palestinian Authority, on other countries.”

The administration’s special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has been pressing Israel, the Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations to take specific confidence-building measures to lay the groundwork for resumption in peace negotiations. The administration wants to have US President Barack Obama announce a breakthrough next month at or on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Getting Arab buy-in on such a deal will be difficult, particularly since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to resume negotiations with Israel until there is a full freeze on settlements. US officials said on Thursday that they would continue to press Israel for as broad a suspension as possible.

But they also acknowledged that a compromise from the previous hard stance on settlements laid out by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton may be necessary due to the equally firm line taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in talks with Mitchell.

Clinton said in May that Israel needed to apply a freeze on all new settlement construction, including so-called “natural growth” in existing projects in the West Bank. It would also apply to activity in east Jerusalem, notably the eviction of Palestinian families and demolition of Palestinian homes.

Mitchell met Netanyahu in London on Wednesday for talks that both sides said made unspecified “good progress” but did not produce an agreement on a freeze.

Crowley and other US officials denied Israeli media reports that Mitchell had agreed to leave East Jerusalem out of the agreement and settle for a nine to 12-month freeze in the West Bank only that would also allow the completion of projects already under construction.

However, diplomats familiar with talks say that the administration has signaled it might be able to accept an “understanding” on East Jerusalem that would entail an Israeli promise not to take “any provocative actions” there.

Meanwhile, thousands of Israeli police deployed in Jerusalem yesterday in a bid to ward off violence ahead of Ramadan prayers at Islam’s holiest site in the city.

Police also restricted access to Palestinians wanting to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The security measures have grown out of previous years, when Friday Ramadan prayers at Al Aqsa turned into riots against Israel.
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