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.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS