ISRAELI PRIME minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a long-awaited meeting with US president Barack Obama in the White House yesterday as the two leaders sought to address the perception of a rift between them.
The relatively high-profile meeting contrasted with Mr Netanyahu’s treatment during his last two visits to Washington, when he called on Mr Obama out of sight of the press.
In a sign of intensified diplomatic activity, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was also due to see Mr Netanyahu and hold meetings with Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak, US special envoy George Mitchell and the international community’s Middle East envoy, Tony Blair.
In spite of the widespread view in both the Israeli and US governments that the two countries should narrow the perceived gap between them, difficult issues continue to beset the sides. Foremost among them is the question of extending the 10-month partial moratorium on settlement activity in the West Bank imposed by Mr Netanyahu’s government.
Israeli analysts anticipated that Mr Obama would call for a continuation of that partial settlement freeze, which is due to expire in September.
The question over whether it will be renewed will set the stage for a fierce diplomatic and political struggle in the weeks ahead. The US will press Mr Netanyahu to agree a renewal, but the right wing of the Israeli coalition would bitterly oppose any such move.
Mr Netanyahu is facing intense domestic pressure to keep an earlier promise and allow large-scale building in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to go ahead after the freeze expires.
Before the White House meeting, Dan Shapiro, Mr Obama’s adviser on the Middle East, praised the settlement freeze as “really quite significant” and said it had “contributed to the progress we have made so far”.
However, Israel’s powerful settler lobby, which enjoys strong support inside Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party, has started a high-profile campaign in favour of restarting construction.
It has placed full-page advertisements in Israeli newspapers and called for rallies against renewing the moratorium. Several senior cabinet ministers have publicly urged the resumption of settlement construction.
Dan Meridor, the deputy prime minister and a senior member of Likud, said Israel should maintain the freeze only in those areas of the West Bank that it did not expect to retain in the event of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
“I think that there is great logic in investing all our efforts, diplomatic and economic and security, in holding on to the blocs that should be part of our country and there we should therefore continue to build in them,” Mr Meridor said, “but it would be wrong to invest national efforts in those places that we are earmarking for the Palestinian state.”
Mr Netanyahu was originally expected at the White House more than a month ago, but cancelled the visit to deal with the aftermath of Israel’s attack on the Gaza aid flotilla on May 31st. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)