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Comments (0)Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that peace talks are off unless Israel extends a partial moratorium on settlement building.
“It’s really a litmus test, make it or break it,” Nabil Shaath, a top aide to Abbas, told JTA, confirming that Abbas raised the freeze in meetings he had Thursday with Netanyahu on the first day of U.S.-sponsored direct talks.
“You don’t negotiate land for peace when someone is grabbing for more land. We are willing to wait until the 26th of this month for more action.”
The moratorium lapses on Sept. 26.
U.S. and Israeli officials refused to comment on whether settlements were even discussed, abiding by what they said was a decision to not describe the contents of the talks.
Abbas and Netanyahu are due to meet again Sept. 14 in Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, and have committed to meeting every two weeks to advance the talks.
The Obama administration wants a peace agreement within a year.
Netanyahu has suggested that he will end the moratorium, which he imposed 10 months ago as a means of spurring the talks, which at that point were indirect.
Settler groups already have rallied against the moratorium in the wake of two shooting attacks in the West Bank this week that left four Israelis dead.
Danny Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council, the settlement umbrella body, told JTA that the settlement movement would seek “political consequences” for Netanyahu should he not end the moratorium. He said the settlers wanted not only a declared end to the moratorium but a substantive increase in proffering for new housing projects.
“We can bring about a crumbling of the Netanyahu government,” said Dayan, who was in Washington to activate against the renewed peace talks.
Abbas: Security is Key
Mahmoud Abbas agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu that securing Israelis and Palestinians was the key to advancing peace.
“Security is of the essence, it is vital for both of us,” the Palestinian Authority president said on the first day of U.S.-brokered direct talks with the Israeli prime minister. “We cannot allow for anyone to do anything that would undermine your security and our security.”
Abbas also noted the role of PA security forces in pursuing terrorists who murdered four Israelis on Tuesday in an ambush near Hebron.
“We not only condemned them but also followed on the perpetrators and found the car that was used, and arrested those who sold and bought the car,” he said.
Netanyahu has said that establishing guarantees of security for Israelis—from rocket attacks and from terrorism—was his priority going into talks. Abbas has focused on ending settlement and on final-status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.
For his part, Netanyahu in recent days has recognized a Palestinian claim to the land and suggested a willingness to address final-status issues sooner rather than later.
Israeli Foreign Ministry Workers Suspend Strike
A six-month strike by Israeli Foreign Ministry workers that jeopardized Israeli diplomatic relations with work slowdowns has been suspended.
At a meeting Wednesday at the Finance Ministry, representatives of the Foreign Ministry’s union “got the impression that there was a real discussion on real issues, and so they suspended the strike,” Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, told JTA. “Clearly, if talks are derailed or frozen or not taken seriously by the Finance Ministry, the suspension will be unsuspended.”
The labor dispute had threatened to harm Israel’s delicate diplomatic relationships, even scuttling overseas trips by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Only an 11th-hour appeal from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saved Netanyahu from operating without diplomatic staff support during his visit to Washington this week.
Foreign Ministry employees launched their work slowdown in February in a dispute over pay and benefits. Aside from halting diplomatic cables and not providing logistics for visits by Israeli dignitaries abroad, ministry officials refused to provide diplomatic protocol and services in Israel.
During the slowdown, the Estonian president’s wife was left stranded at a restaurant outside Jerusalem, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov was abandoned at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum, and nobody showed up to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when he arrived in Israel.