Grappling with troubled peace process, Kerry urges Israeli settlementlimits

Doesnt Kerry realise yet the fake palestinians dont want peace with Israel.  

By Lesley Wroughton

BETHLEHEM, West Bank 

 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urgedIsrael on Wednesday to limit settlement building in occupied territories to help push peace talks with the Palestinians back on track.

Faced with grim Israeli and Palestinian assessments of progress in the talks, Kerry also appeared to slap down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warmly endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's commitment to seeking a two-state solution.

Friction over the talks has risen this past week on the back of Israeli plans, announced in tandem with its release of 26 Palestinian prisoners, for some 3,500 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

"Let me emphasize at this point the position of the United States of America on the settlements is that we consider them... to be illegitimate," Kerry, reaffirming long-standing U.S. policy, said after discussions with Abbas.

Speaking to reporters in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Kerry said it would be better if settlement building was "limited as much as possible in an effort to help create a climate for these talks to be able to proceed effectively".

Palestinians have warned of a brewing crisis if Israel continues to assert that they had effectively agreed to turn a blind eye to the settlement campaign, in exchange for the progressive release of 104 long-serving inmates.

Kerry dismissed Israeli suggestions there had been an understanding with the Palestinians about settlement expansion and stated "unequivocally" his belief that Abbas was "100 percent committed" to peace talks.

"I want to make it extremely clear that at no time did the Palestinians in any way agree as a matter of going back to the talks, that they somehow condone or accept the settlements," he said.

In Jerusalem earlier, Netanyahu had said the U.S.-brokered negotiations had failed to make any real progress.

Speaking to reporters with a stone-faced Kerry at his side, Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of creating "artificial crises" and of trying to "run away from the historic decisions that are needed to make a genuine peace".

Hours later, Kerry said Abbas "wants to try peace and he understands it requires compromise by all the parties".

The chief U.S. diplomat, citing "difficulties" in the peace process, had said earlier in Jerusalem that the United States was convinced that Netanyahu was also determined to pursue an end to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"As in any negotiation there will be moments of up and moments of down, and it goes back and forth," Kerry said.

Kerry, whose shuttle diplomacy helped to revive the talks last July after a three-year break, has set a nine-month schedule for an agreement, despite widespread skepticism.

PALESTINIAN FRUSTRATION

Few details have emerged from the negotiations, held at unannounced times and at secret locations in line with pledges to keep a lid on leaks.

But Palestinian officials have been airing frustration over a lack of movement on core issues such as the borders of a Palestinian state, security arrangements, the future of Israeli settlements and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Abbas, in a speech on Monday, said that despite all the meetings nothing had changed on the ground.

Netanyahu said he hoped Kerry's visit would "help steer (the negotiations) back to a place where we could achieve the historical peace that we seek".

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians seek for a state along with the Hamas Islamist-run Gaza Strip, are considered illegal by most countries.

Israel cites historical and biblical links to the land, where more than 500,000 Israelis now live alongside 2.5 million Palestinians.

In another development, Netanyahu said former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would return to the cabinet after his acquittal in a corruption trial on Wednesday.

The right-wing powerbroker is a hardliner on Palestinian peace talks, which he has said have no chance of succeeding.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said any deal reached by Abbas, a rival of the Islamist group, "would not be binding on our people".

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Shocking: Zero East Jerusalem Housing Starts in 2013, Only 43 in 2012

Since the beginning of 2013, not a single housing unit was built in East Jerusalem, Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel told Army Radio last week. “The figures speak for themselves,” Ariel said. “You should ask the prime minister’s office about it.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu for his part said last week that, regarding construction in east Jerusalem, Israel is better off “being smart and not being right.” And so, in line with that statement, there has been a standing order from the PM, given under heavy American pressure and in accordance with a vehement recommendation from NSC chief Ya’akov Amidror, Minister Ariel has not been given a green light to issue new construction bids in East Jerusalem.

There is a construction freeze in the settlement blocks of Judea and Samaria as well, but the freeze in Jerusalem is particularly dramatic, in light of the fact that it has been lingering through the second term of what is supposed to be a right wing government.

Moreover, the halt on Jewish construction in the E1 area, which lies between the Ma’ale Adumim cluster and the Jerusalem municipality, has created a vacuum that’s invaded by Arab settlers.

 A new report which will be issued this week by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is warning that continued construction freeze in E1 could eliminate the plans for a territorial contiguity between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem.

The report, Understanding Israeli Interests in the E1 Area: Contiguity, Security, and Jerusalem, by former Ha’aretz reporter Nadav Shragai, explains that the opposition to building in E1 is unacceptable to Israel, since in the area between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem, along the Jerusalem-Jericho road and in the E1 area, a considerable amount of illegal Palestinian construction is in progress. This illegal activity has already significantly narrowed the corridor along which the central arterial road between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim runs – from two kilometers to one kilometer.

The illegal construction already threatens to sever and, in the future, preclude Israeli continuity between the two cities. Israeli avoidance of creating settlement continuity between the Jerusalem area and the Ma’ale Adumim area will inevitably give rise to another, competing, Palestinian continuity running north to south, warns the report. It continues:

There is an almost complete Israeli consensus on the need to link Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem via construction in E1, and on the need to retain this territory under Israeli sovereignty within the country’s permanent borders. Six prime ministers, from Rabin to Netanyahu, declared publicly that they would build in E1. Yet, except for the construction of the Judea-Samaria District police station, the process has not even begun because of the international community’s opposition.

Time after time, Israeli leaders proclaim their commitment to Ma’ale Adumim and the building of E1. These same leaders, however, show great deference to the position of the United States, which currently seeks to prevent construction in this area. This behavior entails a built-in contradiction: on the one hand, the message is conveyed that Israel will build in E1 because it is so vital to its interests; on the other, through nonpublic diplomatic channels, world leaders receive another message – that meanwhile Israel will bow to the international community’s opposition to this construction. This behavior makes it very difficult for those involved in Israeli public advocacy to address the world’s and the Palestinians’ objections to the E1 plan.

Sadly, when it comes to fulfilling his promises on renewing Jewish construction in east Jerusalem, Prime Minister Netanyahu is functioning not so much as a “smart rather than right” leader, but as an agent of U.S. foreign policy, as well as an agent for a Palestinian takeover of the Jewish Area C in Judea and Samaria.

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