Netanyahu pressed to drop settlement freeze ahead of US visit
Monday, July 5, 2010
By: ICEJ News

Obama officials claim surprising progress in indirect talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is headed for Washington for an important meeting with US President Barack Obama, leaving behind key elements of his right-of-center government agitating against any extension of the ten-month settlement freeze in trade for direct talks with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu on Sunday endorsed a US call for direct peace talks with the Palestinians, insisting, “I have been willing to meet Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas] from the first day of this government." He said “there is no other way to advance peace" than in face-to-face negotiations, dismissing recent efforts by Abbas to convey his positions and demands through the media.

However, the price for direct talks will likely be Netanyahu having to extend the moratorium on new Jewish housing starts in the West Bank, which expires on September 26. That possibility has unnerved the pro-settlement movement, which has launched an urgent campaign to remind Netanyahu and most other right-wing members of his cabinet that they have repeatedly vowed the freeze will end on deadline and building will resume unabated.

Netanyahu won a tactical victory ahead of his Washington junket when a Knesset committee on Sunday refused to forward to the plenum a bill that would have shifted authority over a settlement freeze from the cabinet to the parliament.

Still, Netanyahu has little political room for maneuver and reports suggest Obama may be satisfied with an Israeli pledge to extend the freeze only in Jewish communities outside the major settlement blocs. This would constitute, in effect, an acceptance by the new American administration of the commitments made to Israel in former president George W. Bush’s letter of April 2004.

Obama administration officials are claiming a surprising amount of progress has been made in recent rounds of indirect talks, but they refused to be drawn into discussions whether they have indeed accepted Bush’s position that a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should reflect "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers.”

Meantime, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat denied an Arabic media report on Saturday that Abbas had conveyed to Israel a written proposal agreeing to Israeli control over the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem and to carrying out a land swap in the West Bank. Israeli officials refused to comment on the Al-Hayat report.