Hours after Israel and the Palestinians accepted a call to restart direct peace talks, politicians on both sides spoke of pitfalls ahead, warning that negotiations would be stillborn unless Israel stopped building in West Bank settlements.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to embrace the summit call made on Friday by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A statement from his office noted with satisfaction that, contrary to Palestinian demands that talks be contingent on Israel extending a temporary freeze on Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, Clinton stated explicitly that the talks must be without preconditions.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has been calling for a year-and-a-half now for the start of such talks, so it’s a good thing that it’s going to happen,” Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said. “We welcome the opportunity to start now.”
However, a leader of the left-wing opposition in the Israeli parliament said the latest initiative would go the way of other efforts, which petered out over the years, unless Netanyahu and the hardliners on which his coalition government leans are ready to pay more than lip-service to Palestinian aspirations.
Israeli public radio quoted Haim Oron, of the Meretz party, as praising the US for showing “initiative and assertiveness” in nudging the two sides back to the negotiating table after a 20-month hiatus, but he added a caveat.
“Without [Israel] continuing a total freeze on settlement and a genuine readiness to withdraw to the international borders and an end to offering the Palestinians a caricature of a state, it will be a waste of everybody’s time,” he said.
Leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) voted early yesterday to accept the US invitation, but even as an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas read out the decision of the policymaking executive committee, senior negotiator Saeb Erekat issued a warning.
“Unless the Israeli government stops settlement and stops demolishing homes in [Israeli-occupied] east Jerusalem, we shall not be able to continue the talks,” he told reporters.
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