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.
PHOTO: AP
“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.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS