Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in an interview published yesterday that he would not seek to lure the Palestinians back to peace talks by renewing a freeze on settlement building.
“We already gave at the office,” Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post, referring to a 10-month partial settlement freeze that expired in late September last year.
Peace talks with the Palestinians began nine months into the freeze, but ground to a halt shortly after the moratorium expired.
Netanyahu’s comments came after the international peacemaking Middle East Quartet called on both sides on Friday to return to peace talks within a month, with the goal of securing a deal before the end of next year.
However, the Palestinians say they will not hold talks while Israel builds on land they want for a future state, a position repeated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday as he returned to the West Bank after submitting a bid for full UN membership in New York.
Netanyahu told the Post the settlement issue was a “pretext.”
“It is a pretext they use again and again, but I think a lot of people see it as a ruse to avoid direct negotiations,” he said.
And the Israeli leader said he had no intention of interfering with plans for the construction of 700 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement neighborhood of Gilo.
“I don’t think there is anything new,” he said of the planned building.
“We plan in Jerusalem. We build in Jerusalem. Period. The same way Israeli governments have been doing for years — since the end of the 1967 war,” he added. “We build in Jewish neighborhoods, the Arabs build in Arab neighborhoods — that is the way the life of this city goes on and develops for its Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike.”
Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post the crux of the failure of talks lay in the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
“Of course it matters — this is what this conflict is all about. It is not about the settlements; it is about the Jewish state. And it must be said over and over again,” he said.
The prospect of a new settlement freeze is also anathema to much of Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition, with hawkish Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman vocally opposed.
Netanyahu was due to meet yesterday with the Group of Eight, a grouping of his Cabinet ministers, to discuss the Quartet’s peace talks proposal, Israeli radio reported.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS