JERUSALEM — JERUSALEM - The Palestinian president warned Sunday that he would not accept a U.S. proposal for resuming peace talks unless Israel stops building homes for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem.
Mahmoud Abbas’ position complicated already troubled American efforts to restart peace talks. Israeli hardliners say they won’t accept the proposed 90-day moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank if it includes east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians say there can’t be peace talks if Israel continues to build homes in captured territories where they want to establish an independent state. In Cairo on Sunday, Abbas said any construction freeze must include east Jerusalem “first and foremost.”
“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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday that he would bring the issue of a renewed slowdown before his Cabinet only after the U.S. lays out the details in writing. Then, he said, “I am sure my fellow ministers will approve it, because this is what is good for Israel.”
Netanyahu did not mention Jerusalem in his statement. He also denied reports that a central aim of the proposed 90-day settlement slowdown was for both sides to agree on final borders between Israel and a future Palestine during that period. With borders determined, Israel could then resume building on any territories it would expect to keep under a final peace deal, defusing the settlement issue.
The U.S. has been pushing Israel to impose a new moratorium to draw Palestinians back to the negotiating table. As an incentive, Washington has offered Israel a fleet of next-generation stealth warplanes and promises to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.
AP interactive
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The Palestinians claim the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for a future independent state.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian government in the West Bank broke down weeks after they began with the end of an earlier, 10-month building slowdown in the West Bank.
Israel claims east Jerusalem - captured in the 1967 Mideast war - as an integral part of its capital. Palestinians hope to establish their future capital in east Jerusalem.
The initial settlement moratorium did not apply to east Jerusalem, though in practice, construction was curbed there, as well as in the West Bank. A total of 500,000 Jews live in both areas.
Also Sunday, an Israeli military court handed down a three-month suspended prison sentence to two soldiers convicted of using a 9-year old Palestinian boy as a human shield during last year’s Gaza Strip war. The soldiers were also demoted.
The court said the soldiers asked the boy to open bags in a building they took over, fearing explosives were inside.
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Michael of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/22/2010