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THE PALESTINIAN Authority yesterday rejected the Obama administration’s call for unconditional resumption of negotiations with Israel and castigated the US for dropping its demand for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Following meetings with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that Israel’s refusal to agree to a settlement freeze, initially demanded by the Obama administration, should not be an obstacle to negotiations. She observed that Israel was proposing “unprecedented” concessions by offering to restrain growth in settlements in the West Bank.