Mitchell unable to get deal on Israeli settlement freeze

IN A serious blow to President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, envoy George Mitchell yesterday left the region after six days…

IN A serious blow to President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, envoy George Mitchell yesterday left the region after six days of shuttle diplomacy, without clinching a deal on an Israeli settlement freeze.

It is still not clear if the tripartite meeting Washington had been pushing for next week at the UN, involving President Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, will now take place.

What is clear is that despite numerous meetings this week, Mr Mitchell failed to force enough concessions out of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to persuade the Palestinians to resume the bilateral peace talks which have been suspended since Israel’s military offensive in Gaza last December.

The focus of the dispute was the Palestinian demand, backed by the Obama administration, for an Israeli commitment to stop building at West Bank Jewish settlements. In an interview broadcast on Israeli television on Thursday night ahead of the Jewish New Year, Mr Netanyahu laid out the Israeli position.

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“There is a slowdown in settlement construction, but not a freeze,” he said. “There are 2,400 units being built, and their construction will continue.”

The prime minister also reiterated that Israel will not accept any restrictions on building in Jerusalem. After the first of two rounds of talks in Jerusalem yesterday between Mr Netanyahu and the US envoy, an Israeli official indicated that Jerusalem may be willing to accept a nine-month moratorium on building. Up till now Israel had been arguing that any freeze be limited to six months.

But at talks in Ramallah it became clear that this was not enough for the Palestinian leadership, and at this juncture there could be no resumption of the peace negotiations.

“We once again reiterated that there are no middle ground solutions for settlements,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters. “A settlement freeze is a settlement freeze.”

The Palestinians insist that the negotiations resume from the point where they broke off with the previous Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert, and that core issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees be included on the agenda.

President Obama had made it clear that one of his top foreign policy aims was to reach a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

The failure of Mr Mitchell’s shuttle diplomacy will raise questions throughout the Arab and Muslim world over Washington’s ability to exert influence over the current Israeli government.

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders will still both be travelling to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week, and despite the stalemate, the possibility still exists that an eleventh hour agreement will be reached paving the way for a symbolic three-way meeting next week.