Israel Offers a Pause in Building New Settlements

Israel Offers a Pause in Building New Settlements
By ETHAN BRONNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/world/middleeast/26israel.html?ref=global-home


JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced on Wednesday his intention to halt new residential construction in West Bank Jewish settlements for 10 months as part of an effort to revive stalled Middle East peace talks, but a top Palestinian official said it was not enough.

A statement from Mr. Netanyahu’s office said he was requesting approval of the stoppage from his inner security cabinet, which was entering into a meeting. It said the moratorium would be in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names of the West Bank, meaning it would not include Jerusalem, and would apply to new residential building, so existing construction would continue and public structures like schools and community centers would be unaffected.

Mr. Netanyahu told his ministers that the step was aimed at promoting the nation’s interests, adding, “It allows us to place a simple fact before the world: The government of Israel wants to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians, is taking practical steps in order to do so and is very serious in its intentions to promote peace.”

The building moratorium had been anticipated and offered previously to the Palestinians via American mediators. It was turned down then on the grounds that it did not include Jerusalem. At a briefing for foreign reporters in his Ramallah office on Wednesday, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said the announcement would not bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

“We’re not looking for the resumption of the process for the sake of it,” he said. “This is not new. The exclusion of Jerusalem is a very serious problem for us.”

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, also rejected the proposal during a visit to Argentina, saying, “We do not believe we can restart the negotiations with them while they are continuing building in our territories.”

A settlement freeze had been pushed for months by the Obama administration with the idea that it would produce reciprocal steps from Arab states, including renewed low-level diplomatic ties and rights of Israeli planes to fly over their territories. But the Arab states offered little and Mr. Netanyahu also rejected it on the grounds that it was unfair to settlers to stop their natural growth while negotiations proceeded.

Since then, Israel’s diplomatic status has declined as international concern over its conduct of its war in Gaza 11 months ago has intensified. The settlements in the West Bank are widely viewed as violations of international law.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government coalition includes parties of the right devoted to settlement growth, however, and his announcement brought internal anger.

Daniel Hershkowitz, minister of science and technology from the Jewish Home party, demanded conditioning any freeze on a full government decision. “A rightist government should not be strangling the settlements but helping them,” he said.

Dani Dayan, chairman of Yesha Council, the settlers’ umbrella organization, said in a telephone interview: “This represents a total collapse of the policy of the Netanyahu government. It was elected on a platform of renewing the development of the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria. As soon as it took office, it started to put difficulties and restraints on our communities. Now it has reached the stage of drying them out. Netanyahu himself put it most eloquently in the past when he said, in his own words, that ‘freezing the development of a community is a code word for annihilating it.’ ”

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.