Differences remain between Israel and US – White House: BBC
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the talks had been straightforward
Differences remain between Israel and the US, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the White House has said.
President Obama urged the Israeli PM to take steps to build confidence in the peace process, during “honest” talks on Tuesday, said spokesman Robert Gibbs.
Mr Gibbs also said the US was seeking “clarification” of the latest plans to build homes in occupied East Jerusalem.
Mr Netanyahu’s trip came amid the worst crisis in US-Israeli ties for decades.
The Israeli prime minister delayed his departure from Washington on Wednesday to meet the US Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell.
The spat flared two weeks ago when, during a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, Israel unveiled plans to build 1,600 homes in part of East Jerusalem, which Washington branded an insult.
TIMELINE: ISRAEL-US ROW
9 Mar: Israel announces the building of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem during visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
Mr Biden condemns the move
11 Mar: Mr Biden says there must be no delay in resuming Mid-East peace talks, despite the row
12 Mar: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Israeli move is “deeply negative” for relations
15 Mar: The US says it is waiting for a “formal response” from Israel to its proposals to show it is committed to Mid-East peace
16 Mar: The US envoy to the Mid-East postpones a visit to Israel
17 Mar: President Obama denies there is a crisis with Israel
22 Mar: Hillary Clinton tells pro-Israel lobby group Aipac Israel has to make “difficult but necessary choices” if it wants peace with Palestinians.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu tells Aipac Israel has a “right to build” in Jerusalem
23 Mar: Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu meet behind closed doors with no media access
23 Mar: Jerusalem municipal government approves building of 20 new homes in East Jerusalem
24 Mar: The White House says differences remain
Then, minutes before Mr Netanyahu’s fence-mending visit to the White House on Tuesday, it emerged the Jerusalem municipal government had approved the building of 20 new apartments.
Mr Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday there were still areas of “disagreement” between the sides, following the two meetings in Washington, one of which was unscheduled.
He described the three-and-a-half hours of talks as an “honest and straightforward discussion that continues”.
“The president has asked the prime minister for certain things to build confidence up to proximity talks that we think can make progress,” Mr Gibbs said, referring to the peace process.
He reiterated the US position that there is an “unbreakable bond” between America and the Israeli people.
The Israelis said there had been a “good atmosphere” during Tuesday’s talks.
But the BBC’s Kim Ghattas in Washington notes Mr Netanyahu did not get the reception usually reserved for America’s allies.
There was no press conference, no lavish welcome, and the White House did not even release a picture of the meeting.
It all signals that the US is playing tough, making clear it is upset with the Israeli government, says our correspondent.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem for their future capital, but Israel insists the city cannot be divided.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Obama and Netanyahu play hardball over Israeli settlement plan: The Guardian
News blackout imposed as two leaders engage in tough talks over plans for another East Jerusalem settlement
The White House was today seeking clarification from the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, after it emerged that approval has been issued for another Jewish settlement project in East Jerusalem, which the US tried to halt last year.
The latest project, which involves the demolition of the historic Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah, came as President Barack Obama and Netanyahu were engaged in hardball diplomacy over the whole issue of settlements. The White House confirmed today there was disagreement between the two.
Netanyahu has publicly refused to give a commitment to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the Palestinians have said they will not resume even indirect negotiations with the Israelis until the issue is resolved.
The White House, unusually for the visit of a foreign leader, has imposed a news blackout on the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama last night. There was no picture of the two men together and no press statement by the White House.
The White House press spokesman, Robert Gibbs, asked by reporters today about the meeting, described it as “honest and straightforward”, diplomatic speak for tough discussions. “There are areas of agreement and areas of disagreement,” Gibbs said.
Netanyahu initially met Obama for 90 minutes. Unusually, the Israeli prime minister then held discussions with his own staff in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a further 80 minutes before asking to see Obama again.
The two leaders then held a further 30 minutes of discussion.
Gibbs said that Netanyahu was continuing talks with Obama administration staff today.
There are conflicting accounts of precisely what Netanyahu has offered Obama. Officials in Washington reported Netanyahu had offered concessions to the Palestinians such as removal of some roadblocks and Israeli troops from the West Bank and an unofficial freeze on settlement building.
The row, which has seen relations between the US and Israel sink to their lowest point for decades, began earlier this month when, even as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, was visiting Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities approved 1,600 new homes that would almost double the size of Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in East Jerusalem.
A final building permit for the Shepherd Hotel project was signed last Thursday, before Netanyahu flew to Washington for talks with Obama. The decision means work can start at any time to demolish it and to build 20 new apartments for Jewish settlers in its place.
“What it means politically is that it is one very important project that can torpedo the peace talks,” said Hagit Ofran, a settlement expert at the Israeli group Peace Now. “It is in the hands of the settlers to decide when to bring the bulldozers … It is a very dangerous step.”
Another project to build 200 settler homes in a nearby area of Sheikh Jarrah, which was shelved last year, was revived a few weeks ago and has passed the preliminary stages of the approval process, Ofran said. If successful it would be built on the site of homes from which several Palestinian families have been evicted in recent months.
“These new settlement units are part of Israel’s attempt to forcibly end any Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem, and to foreclose any hope of reaching agreement on the core issue of Jerusalem in line with international law,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator.
The Shepherd Hotel, close to the British consulate, was once a headquarters for Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem. After 1967, Israel deemed it absentee property. It was then bought, reportedly for $1m, in 1985 by Irving Moskowitz, a Jewish American millionaire who funds settlements.
Elisha Peleg, a Jerusalem city councillor, said the Shepherd Hotel building permit was a “technical step” and that more construction would follow there and in other Palestinian areas of the city. “We will continue to build all over Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah and Ras al-Amud as well,” he said.
Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli human rights lawyer and founder of the group Ir Amim, said the new building was part of the encirclement of Jerusalem’s Old City by Jewish settlements. “It is going to be interpreted by the Palestinians, with I think a degree of legitimacy, as an attempt to eradicate the expression of their culture and presence,” he said. “It is the first new construction in Sheikh Jarrah: the encroachment of ideologically motivated settlers in a Palestinian neighbourhood.”
Two meetings, but no agreement between Obama and Netanyahu: Haaretz
Israeli and American leaders could not even agree on a joint statement after their White House talks.
WASHINGTON – The meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday did not resolve the differences of opinion on the future of the peace process with the Palestinians or Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu canceled a series of interviews and briefings with the American media, scheduled for Wednesday morning, in order to focus on the serious disagreements with the Obama administration.
Netanyahu arrived at the White House at 5:30 P.M. local time Tuesday, and held one on one talks with Obama for an hour and a half. The meeting ended in serious disagreement; after the talks – in an unprecedented move – Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their advisers retired to a side room in the White House for consultations, while Obama left for his residential quarters. Some 90 minutes later, Netanyahu requested a second meeting with the president, who returned to the Oval Office for a further half-hour conversation with the prime minister.
But the second meeting between the two also ended in disagreement, and they could not even reach a consensus on a joint statement. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak then left the White House for the Israeli embassy in Washington, leaving the prime minister’s aides, Yitzhak Molcho, Ron Dermer and Nir Chefetz, as well as Ambassador Michael Oren, to hold talks with Obama’s people. Only at 2 A.M. did these consultations end, and Netanyahu and his entourage return to their hotel.
In the wake of such serious disagreements, and the need to continue the lower-level consultations Wednesday morning, Netanyahu canceled his media appearances.
Sources in Netanyahu’s entourage said that the day had been devoted solely to talks with senior American officials, led by Molcho and Dermer. Netanyahu was set to meet special envoy George Mitchell on Wednesday, and he and Barak were to spend the day at the Israeli embassy.
“The objective is to reach understandings with the American administration before we take off for Israel,” said a source in the Netanyahu camp.
Nevertheless, it is unclear when Netanyahu would board a plane for home. Apparently this will happen Wednesday evening, Washington time, at the earliest.
US seeks “clarification” on Israel’s latest East Jerusalem build: Ma’an/Agencies
Bethlehem – The White House said Wednesday it is seeking Israel’s clarification on a recent decision to build 20 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, in the flashpoint Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, on the site of the Shepherd Hotel.
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the US administration believes Israel’s continued building in Jerusalem is destructive to the peace process, the Associated Press reported.
Vietor said the US is urging both Israelis and Palestinians to refrain from acts that could undermine trust, amid efforts to kick start the peace process.
The latest announcement to continue building in East Jerusalem, despite international calls for a halt, follow a recent string of declarations by the Israeli government since US Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the region as the American administration launches a fresh bid to renew stalled talks that broke of in December 2008 following Israel’s assault on Gaza.
During the visit, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced the construction of 1,600 Israeli-only homes in East Jerusalem, on the eve of the PLO’s decision to enter into US-brokered proximity talks with Israel. The move sparked international condemnation, with the Quartet calling on Israel to revoke its decision. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told conveners at the AIPAC conference that Jerusalem construction would continue unhindered.
Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday that Israel’s most recent decision to build in Sheikh Jarrah, on the site the Shephard Hotel, is damaging Israel’s credibility as a serious partner for peace and are further attempts to erase Palestinian presence in the city.
“If Israel is serious about negotiations, then why not stop illegal settlement construction as the international community is calling for and the Road Map demands, especially when every effort is being made to start proximity talks? Why continue doing what Israel is doing when everyone is urging Israel to do what is right and what is needed if peace is to have any chance,” Erekat said in a statement.
“Israel is digging itself into a hole that it will have to climb out of if it is serious about peace. There is overwhelming international consensus on the illegality of Israel’s settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and the damage they are doing to the two-state solution.”
Plans submitted to construct a new Israeli settlement in Sheikh Jarrah consist of 90 housing units, as well as a synagogue, a kindergarten and a children’s park. The whole complex will be approximately 10,000 square meters in size and slated to house up to 500 new settlers. On Tuesday the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality gave the go-ahead for the construction of 20 new Jewish-only units.
Barak: I can’t promise there will be no future settlement mishaps: Haaretz
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Charlie Rose to be aired on Wednesday, has said that he cannot guarantee that there won’t be any future mishaps regarding settlement building.
Barak was speaking about the trigger of the recent crisis in U.S.-Israel relations, which was the Israeli government’s announcement two weeks ago of plans to build 1,600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
“I cannot tell you that we fully control any step or any announcement about all these dozens [of] programs which are in the pipeline, including many that are related to Arab building in Jerusalem and so on,” Barak told Rose.
Advertisement
“I cannot promise that no mishap will happen. But I can promise you that we will do our best to make sure that we’ll keep with the American administration a kind of open dialogue about what happens,? Barak said.
The Defense Minister did emphasize his disappointment with the circumstances of the East Jerusalem building announcement.
“It was embarrassing, damaging, very wrong timing, but I can assure that neither Netanyahu nor the Cabinet knew about it in advance,” Barak told Rose.
“It’s a complicated, uncontrollable process, but now the government nominated a committee of senior level officials to make sure that this cannot happen once again.”
Israel Confirms New Building in East Jerusalem: The New York Times
A Palestinian woman and child walked past the former Hotel Shepherd in east Jerusalem on Wednesday, as local officials gave final approval to build 20 apartments for Jewish settlers where the Palestinian hotel once stood.
Jerusalem city hall gave the project the final go-ahead on March 18, days after city officials said the landowners had paid the required fees. Once the fees were paid, City Hall said in a statement on Wednesday, “approval was granted automatically.”
A spokesman for the White House said on Wednesday that it was seeking “clarification” on the building project. In New York, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, told the Security Council that “all settlement activity is illegal, but inserting settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem is particularly troubling.”
He added: “This leads to tensions and undermines prospects for addressing the final status of Jerusalem.”
The plan in question is for construction of 20 residential units in the Shepherd Hotel compound in Sheik Jarrah, a neighborhood populated mostly by Palestinians, and more recently by some Israeli nationalist Jews, just north of the Old City.
The green light for the project was first published by Ynet, an Israeli news Web site, on Tuesday night, shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Obama in Washington.
Given the tense atmosphere surrounding building plans in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem, Israeli officials Wednesday played down the significance of the latest development, saying approval was a technicality that required no further decision by any committee or body.
“This plan began to be formulated in the 1980s,” Naomi Tsur, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem responsible for planning and environment, said in a telephone interview. “It was given final approval nine or ten months ago.” The latest approval , she said, “was a technical step put out by a computer somewhere. But somebody with peculiarly accurate timing released this non-information within minutes of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting.”
Officials described the Ynet report, which said that final approval had been granted only on March 18, as “distorted” and intended “to stir up a provocation” during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. The plan received final approval in July 2009, officials said.
Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war, but its annexation was never internationally recognized. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state and demand a halt to Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can start.
The Obama administration was close to starting indirect, so-called “proximity talks” between the Israelis and Palestinians, with an American envoy shuttling between the two sides. Those were put off when Israel announced plans this month for 1,600 new housing units in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of East Jerusalem during a visit here by Vice President Joseph R. Biden, infuriating the Obama administration.
Mr. Netanyahu apologized for the bad timing but continues to insist on Israel’s right to build anywhere in what Israel considers its united capital of Jerusalem.
Still, in a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that a meeting of the district planning committee had been put off earlier this week pending the conclusions of a committee set up by Mr. Netanyahu to improve government coordination regarding building plans in Jerusalem.
The 20-unit complex in question is to be built on property bought by a Miami-based businessman, Irving Moskowitz, in 1985. Mr. Moskowitz has long supported the development of Israeli and Jewish housing in Arab areas of East Jerusalem. The Shepherd Hotel was originally built as a villa for Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who notoriously aligned himself with Hitler. The historic building on the site will be preserved, Ms. Tsur said. The property is not far from Israeli government buildings and foreign consulates.
Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who opposes Israeli expansion in East Jerusalem and is active in promoting a political solution for the city, said he has been warning the Israeli and American governments for months that the Shepherd Hotel building project was likely to get under way as soon as there was a prospect of peace talks.
“Projects like this are a spoiler’s paradise,” he said.
Leftist Israeli groups like Peace Now, which oppose Israeli settlement in the territories occupied in 1967, have been monitoring and highlighting new construction plans.
According to Israeli planning and construction regulations, construction usually has to start within a year after approval has been granted, or the building permit will be nullified.
Ms. Tsur, the deputy mayor, said that once fees are paid by developers and the green light is given, the “clock begins to tick.”
“They can start building tomorrow,” she said.
Ms. Tsur also said that the final approval was given last year in “full coordination” with the British and United States consulates. But both the United States and Britain raised concerns about the project when it was approved last July. The British Consulate is very close to where the new construction will begin.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement on Wednesday that “Israel is digging itself into a hole that it will have to climb out of if it is serious about peace.
He added: “There is overwhelming international consensus on the illegality of Israel’s settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and the damage they are doing to the two-state solution,” he said.
Dispute with Israel underscores limits of U.S. power, a shifting alliance: Washington Post
The two-week-old dispute between Israel and the United States over housing construction in East Jerusalem has exposed the limits of American power to pressure Israeli leaders to make decisions they consider politically untenable. But the blowup also shows that the relationship between the two allies is changing, in ways that are unsettling for Israel’s supporters.
President Obama and his aides have cast the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not just the relationship with Israel, as a core U.S. national security interest. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the military’s Central Command, put it starkly in recent testimony on Capitol Hill: “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel.” His comments raised eyebrows in official Washington — and overseas — because they suggested that U.S. military officials were embracing the idea that failure to resolve the conflict had begun to imperil American lives.
Visiting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received warm applause at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Monday night when he bluntly dismissed U.S. demands to end housing construction in the disputed part of Jerusalem. He was greeted as a hero when he visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
But the administration has been strikingly muted in its reception. No reporters, or even photographers, were invited when Netanyahu met with Secretary of State Clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Biden on Monday or when he met with Obama on Tuesday night. There was no grand Rose Garden ceremony. Official spokesmen issued only the blandest of statements.
The cooling in the U.S.-Israel relationship coincides with an apparent deepening of Israel’s diplomatic isolation. Anger has grown in Europe in the wake of Israel’s suspected misuse of European passports to kill a Palestinian militant in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced the expulsion of a senior diplomat over the incident, an unusually drastic step for an ally. Relations with Turkey, a rare Muslim friend of Israel for decades, have hit a new low.
Obama and his aides have strongly pledged support for Israel’s security — including a reiteration by Clinton when she addressed AIPAC on Monday — but they have continued to criticize its settlement policies in tough terms. Clinton notably did not pull her punches on the issue when she addressed the pro-Israel group, warning that whether Israelis like it or not, “the status quo” is not sustainable. The drawing of such lines by the administration has been noticed in the Middle East.
“Israeli policies have transcended personal affront or embarrassment to American officials and are causing the United States real pain beyond the Arab-Israeli arena. This is something new, and therefore the U.S. is reacting with unusually strong, public and repeated criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies and its general peace-negotiating posture,” Rami Khouri, editor at large of Beirut’s Daily Star, wrote this week. “At the same time Washington repeats it ironclad commitment to Israel’s basic security in its 1967 borders, suggesting that the U.S. is finally clarifying that its support for Israel does not include unconditional support for Israel’s colonization policies.”
Problems from the start
The Obama administration has struggled from the start to find its footing with Israel and the Palestinians. Obama took office soon after Israel’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip, which had ruptured peace talks nurtured by the George W. Bush administration. Obama appointed a special envoy, former senator George J. Mitchell, on his second day in office. But then the administration tried to pressure Israel to freeze all settlement expansion — and failed. The United States further lost credibility when Clinton embraced Netanyahu’s compromise proposal, which fell short of Palestinian expectations, as “unprecedented.”
U.S. pressure at the time also backfired because it appeared to let the Palestinians off the hook. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to enter into direct talks before a settlement freeze, even though he had done so before. The administration had to settle for indirect talks, with Mitchell shuttling back and forth. The recent disagreement has set back that effort.
Administration officials have been careful to turn down the heat in their latest exchanges with Netanyahu over Jerusalem, even as they continue to express their displeasure. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley spoke in clipped sentences Tuesday when asked to describe the hours of private conversations with Netanyahu this week: “We have outlined some concerns to the Israeli government. They have responded to our concerns. That conversation continues. This is a dynamic process. There’s a lot of give-and-take involved in these conversations.”
Crowley argued that “the only way to ultimately resolve competing claims, on the future of Jerusalem, is to get to direct negotiations.” He said the administration faces a series of “pass-fail” tests: Can it get the two parties to join direct talks? Can it persuade them to address the vexing issues surrounding the final status of Jerusalem? And ultimately, “do we get to an agreement that is in the Israeli interest, in the Palestinian interest, in the interest of the rest of the region and clearly in the interest of the United States?”
Arab leaders have long said that a peace deal would be possible if the United States pressured Israel. But many experts say such hope is often misplaced. In the case of East Jerusalem, Netanyahu believes that a halt to construction represents political suicide for his coalition, so no amount of U.S. pressure will lead him to impose a freeze — at least until he is in the final throes of peace talks.
“U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context,” said Robert Malley, a peace negotiator in the Clinton White House. “The latest episode was an apt illustration. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong. The crisis has been deferred, not resolved.”