Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer of a freeze on settlement building in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel’s Jewish identity was widely seen yesterday as a ploy to complicate US-backed peace efforts.
Netanyahu on Monday spelled out recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as his price for a renewal of a ban on construction in the occupied West Bank, seen as key to rescuing direct talks relaunched last month.
The offer was rejected out of hand by the Palestinians, who said it had “nothing to do with the peace process,” and was also widely slammed by Israeli politicians and commentators as a political ploy to sabotage the talks.
Netanyahu’s proposal was little more than a “major diversionary ploy” cooked up in order to ease the crisis over the expiry of the freeze, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said in a scathing editorial.
Top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot said it was “implicit” from Netanyahu’s speech that he was “going to do everything to torpedo the negotiations with the Palestinians at their current stage.”
“Netanyahu is searching for any possible trick to push the Palestinians into the position of being rejectionists,” Shimon Shiffer wrote in an analysis headlined: “The Derailer.”
A renewal of the ban on Jewish settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, which expired on Sept. 26, is largely seen as the key to reviving the moribund peace talks, which began three weeks earlier.
Despite huge diplomatic pressure to reimpose the freeze, especially from Washington, Netanyahu has refused to do so, while Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has said he will hold no further talks until the building stops.
“If the Palestinian leadership will unequivocally say to its people that it recognizes Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, I will be ready to convene my Cabinet and ask for another moratorium on building,” Netanyahu said on Monday.
The Palestinians formally recognized Israel on the eve of the 1993 Oslo Accords, but they have rejected demands to recognize its Jewish character because it would effectively renounce the right of return for refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
“When he demands that Abbas recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people, he is offering assisted political suicide to the Palestinian leader,” Haaretz commentator Akiva Eldar wrote.
For one senior member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu’s maneuver had practically ruled out any renewal of a building freeze in the West Bank.
“His proposal pushes off a building freeze and talks with the Palestinians,” the official told the Yediot.
“Negotiations with the Americans are at an impasse, so Netanyahu came up with a proposal to show that he is willing to continue the talks, but it is clear that the Palestinians will not agree. Therefore, there is virtually no chance that the construction freeze will be reinstated,” the Likud official said.
Meanwhile, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said members of the Cabinet’s decisionmaking circle doubt a peace deal with the Palestinians can be reached in the near future.
Yaalon’s remarks appear contrary to Netanyahu’s stated commitment on trying to reach an agreement within a year. Yaalon spoke to Army Radio yesterday.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the