The Obama administration’s troubled attempt to revive Mideast peace talks took another blow Sunday when the Palestinian president rejected the latest U.S. plan to get the sides talking again.
Mahmoud Abbas said a proposed 90-day freeze on Israeli settlement construction wouldn’t get him back to the negotiating table unless it includes east Jerusalem, a condition Israel staunchly opposes.
Palestinians claim east Jerusalem for their future capital. For decades, Israel has built Jewish sections around the city’s periphery, and about 200,000 Jews live there now. Palestinians consider the large neighborhoods as illegal settlements.
The impasse highlights the gaps the U.S. must bridge — not to just to achieve a peace deal, but even to get the sides to sit down and talk about one.
In Cairo Sunday, Abbas said any construction freeze must include east Jerusalem “first and foremost,” along with the West Bank.
“If the moratorium does not apply to all Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem, we will not accept it,” Abbas said after consultations with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
The issue of Israeli settlements has bedeviled the latest round of peace talks since their launch in September. They broke down three weeks later when a previous 10-month slowdown on West Bank construction expired.
Since then, the U.S. has been pushing Israel to impose a new, 90-day moratorium to draw the Palestinians back to talks. The U.S. hopes the sides can reach a deal on future borders during that time, in effect determining which settlements Israel will get to keep in a peace agreement and defusing the issue of where it can build.
To entice Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pro-settlement coalition government, the U.S. has offered a fleet of next-generation stealth warplanes and promises to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.
Speaking to lawmakers from his Likud Party late Sunday, Netanyahu said he was waiting for the U.S. to put the offer in writing so he could bring it before his Cabinet.
Netanyahu also said the proposed 90-day moratorium was not specifically meant to deal with borders.
“There is no such request and there is no such commitment,” he said. Instead, the sides would discuss “all topics of substance as a whole.”
Cabinet minister Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said Shas seeking clarifications from the U.S. that the measure will not apply to east Jerusalem and that the U.S. will not ask Israel to freeze settlement construction again once the 90 days are up.
The U.S. has been seeking a compromise. American officials said they were not pushing to include east Jerusalem in the new freeze but were also resisting Israel demands to declare the area exempt. They spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations are ongoing.
East Jerusalem was not officially included in the previous freeze, but Israel quietly curbed new construction there. The U.S. appears to be seeking a similar compromise now.
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and immediately annexed the eastern sector — a move the international community has not recognized. Israel now considers east Jerusalem an integral part of its capital, though the Palestinians hope to establish their capital there.
Previous unsuccessful negotiations have included a formula under which Israel would keep the Jewish sections and the Palestinians would receive the Arab areas. Netanyahu has not repeated that formula.
While the Israeli Cabinet met Sunday, hundreds of Jewish settlers — many of them youths who were excused from school and bused in — demonstrated against the U.S. plan outside Netanyahu’s office. Some held posters accusing Netanyahu of “giving in” to U.S. pressure.
Highlighting its de facto control, Israel approved a five-year renovation plan near the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, and in the adjacent Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s hotly contested Old City.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said the project was for maintenance only and would not touch disputed shrines holy to both Jews and Muslims.
“The Western Wall brings millions of tourists each year,” Regev said. “This money is for upkeep and preservation and in no way does this change the status quo.”
Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the plan, saying it was bad for the peace process.
“Any Israeli activities in the occupied part of Jerusalem are illegal,” Khatib said. “It’s not healthy as far as the peace process is concerned because peace would require the end of the occupation of east Jerusalem.”
The Israeli renovation plan does not include the Mughrabi Gate entrance to the disputed hilltop, next to the Western Wall. Israeli construction there sparked violent Palestinians protests in 2007.