ISRAELI PRIME minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to hold talks in Egypt today with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, said yesterday the time had come to relaunch stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
His comments coincided with reports that Washington is proposing a new initiative to jumpstart bilateral negotiations, despite Israel’s refusal to commit to a total freeze in settlement construction as demanded by the Palestinians as a precondition for renewing talks.
Both Palestinian and US officials yesterday condemned Israeli plans to build another 692 homes in three east Jerusalem neighbourhoods, Har Homa, Pisgat Zeev and Neve Yaakov, built on Arab land captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Last month, Israel declared a 10-month settlement construction freeze in an effort to coax the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, but Jerusalem was excluded from the moratorium. The Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said: “We make a distinction between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is our capital, and remains such.”
Condemning the Israeli announcement, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said there was an expansion of building, not a freeze. “The American administration needs to realise that the policies of the Israeli government embody settlements and not peace, and that their choice is settlements and not peace.”
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that the Jerusalem construction would hinder efforts to break the diplomatic deadlock. “We feel that unilateral actions make it harder for people to get back together at the table, and that’s what our goals are,” the official said.
Ahead of his departure for Egypt, Mr Netanyahu said conditions were “now ripe” for renewing talks. “The time for excuses is over. Now is the time for action.”
Mr Netanyahu said he would try to breathe new life into the peace process during the Cairo talks.
US peace envoy George Mitchell is due back in the region in the second week of January. According to Arab and western diplomatic sources in Cairo, he will present letters of guarantee to both Israel and the Palestinians.
Former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin, a key architect of the Oslo peace accords, said Mr Netanyahu was close to agreeing with US administration officials a formula for renewing peace talks.
Mr Beilin told a gathering of the left-wing opposition Meretz party that Israel would agree to allot two years for land-for-peace talks with the Palestinians. He said the talks would be based on the Palestinian demand for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, and that Jerusalem, land swaps and security arrangements would be on the agenda. There was no confirmation of his comments from Israeli officials.