Israel, Palestinians agree to resume indirect peace talks/As Biden Visits, Israel Unveils Plan for New Settlements

Israel, Palestinians agree to resume indirect peace talks
By Janine Zacharia
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, March 8, 2010; 12:49 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030801989.html?hpid=topnews


JERUSALEM -- Israel and the Palestinians agreed Monday to resume indirect peace negotiations mediated by the United States, said President Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell.

Mitchell, who shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian officials the past few days, said he would return to the region next week to continue discussions on the "structure and scope" of the negotiations.

Mitchell released the statement two hours after Vice President Biden arrived in Israel for a four-day visit designed to reassure the Israeli leadership about the United States' commitment to curbing Iran's nuclear program, seek progress in the peace process and win over an Israeli public, some of whom felt snubbed in the past year by Obama, who visited Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia but skipped Israel.

Mitchell said he hoped the indirect talks would lead to "direct negotiations as soon as possible. We also again encourage the parties, and all concerned, to refrain from any statements or actions which may inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of these talks."

The outlook for a resumption of negotiations was clouded by Israel's announcement on Monday of construction of 112 new housing units in the West Bank settlement Beitar Ilit. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas protested the move while meeting with Mitchell in Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian governance in the West Bank.

The Israeli Defense Ministry released a statement saying the units were approved before Israel agreed to a 10-month moratorium on new settlement construction in November, a move the United States had hoped would give Abbas enough political cover to return to negotiations toward Palestinian statehood.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have traditionally met face to face to discuss the core issues of the conflict: the future of Jerusalem, borders, security and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Talks broke down most recently after Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008, which left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead and was aimed at stopping rockets from being fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The United States has decided that circumstances now would allow only so-called "proximity" talks instead.

Few long-time observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict believe such indirect negotiations are reason to celebrate. Proximity talks are a "throwback to what we did 20 years ago," said Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and to Egypt. "Palestinians and Israelis have negotiated face to face in direct talks for 20 years, and it's not understandable why we would now have them sit in separate rooms and move between them," Kurtzer told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

Biden is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials Tuesday and with Abbas on Wednesday. On Thursday, Biden will deliver a speech on U.S.-Israel relations before leaving for Amman, Jordan.

Minutes before Biden -- the most senior U.S. official to visit Israel since Obama took office -- touched down at Ben Gurion airport outside of Tel Aviv, there were complaints that it was not Air Force One landing. "While we welcome Vice President Biden, a long-time friend and supporter of Israel, we see it as nothing short of an insult that President Obama himself is not coming," Danny Danon, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, said in a statement.








As Biden Visits, Israel Unveils Plan for New Settlements
By ETHAN BRONNER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html?th&emc=th


JERUSALEM — Hours after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security here on Tuesday, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Mr. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

Children played with fireworks on Tuesday in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Israel announced plans to add 1,600 housing units there.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly embarrassed at the move by his interior minister, Eli Yishai, leader of the right-wing Shas Party, who has made Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem one of his central causes.

A statement issued in the name of the Interior Ministry but distributed by the prime minister’s office said that the housing plan was three years in the making and that its announcement was procedural and unrelated to Mr. Biden’s visit. It added that Mr. Netanyahu had just been informed of it himself.

Mr. Netanyahu supports Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, yet wants to get new talks with the Palestinians going and to maintain strong relations with Washington. But when he formed his coalition a year ago he joined forces with several right-wing parties, and has since found it hard to keep them in line.

Mr. Biden came to Jerusalem largely to assure the Israelis of Washington’s commitment to its security and to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.

He began the day on a note of support, asserting the Obama administration’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

But by the end of the day, Mr. Biden’s tone had a very different quality. He issued a statement condemning “the substance and timing of the announcement” of the housing, and added, “Unilateral action taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations on permanent status issues.”

He said the announcement “runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

On Monday, George J. Mitchell, the administration’s Middle East envoy, announced that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to four months of indirect peace talks, the first such negotiations in more than a year.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, called the new housing announcement “a dangerous decision that will torpedo the negotiations and sentence the American efforts to complete failure.”

Mr. Abu Rudeineh added that “it is now clear that the Israeli government is not interested in negotiating, nor is it interested in peace.”

“The American administration must respond to this provocation with actual measures, as it is no longer possible to just turn the other cheek,” he continued, “and massive American pressure is required in order to compel Israel to abandon its peace-destroying behavior.”

Last spring, the Obama administration tried to get Israel to stop all settlement building in order to restart peace talks and hoped Arab states would promise confidence-building measures in exchange. No such measures were forthcoming, and the Israelis rejected the freeze.

After much haggling, in November the Israelis announced a 10-month partial freeze on new settlement building in the West Bank. But they exempted Jerusalem from the moratorium because Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and considers it part of its united capital, a position the rest of the world rejects.

The new housing announced on Tuesday is for an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Ramat Shlomo. The Interior Ministry’s statement said the step on Tuesday was part of a long process that would continue for quite some time before the units were actually built.

The announcement followed a day in which Mr. Biden, who will stay in the region through Friday, had made a concerted and highly public show of American support for Israel.

“Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel,” he said, standing next to Mr. Netanyahu at the prime minister’s residence. “There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”

Mr. Biden also said that, like Israel, the Obama administration was determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and from supporting groups that threatened Israel. The United States is trying to build a consensus for international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Israel has threatened to use military force, but is going along with the American approach for now. Part of the purpose of this trip is to cement that cooperation.

Mr. Biden expressed satisfaction at the agreement for the new talks with the Palestinians. They are being called “proximity talks” because Mr. Mitchell is expected to shuttle between the Israeli government in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to bring the two sides toward direct negotiations.

In his public comments with Mr. Biden, Mr. Netanyahu focused on the need “to be persistent and purposeful in making sure we get to those direct negotiations that will enable us to resolve this conflict.”

The announcement on the housing expansion was not the first time that Mr. Netanyahu had been blindsided by one of his more nationalist or conservative ministers or their aides. Earlier this year, for example, Daniel Ayalon, the deputy to the nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, increased tensions with Turkey when he humiliated its ambassador to Israel in front of television cameras.

Mr. Biden is scheduled to spend Wednesday in the West Bank meeting with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, then to give a speech in Tel Aviv on Thursday before heading to Jordan.

After his meetings on Tuesday morning with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill, visited the grave site of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to reconciliation with the Palestinians.

Mr. Biden then toured Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and center. After signing its guest book, he said: “The phrase ‘never again’ is used so often it almost has lost its meaning. But then again all you have to do is walk through Yad Vashem to understand how incredible the journey has been for world Jewry and why Israel is such a central part of its existence.”

Jack Healy contributed reporting from New York.