The US - not Israel - decided not to go for the 'settlement freeze' extension
This report by Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Week certainly makes sense.I wrote on Tuesday that “Jerusalem’s refusal to accept a U.S. deal, including military and diplomatic perks, in return for a 90-day extension of the freeze on building in the settlements has soured the administration on Netanyahu lately.”That fits right in with this report, which I blogged last week.
But the next day a senior Israeli official contacted me to say that “contrary to widespread conventional wisdom Jerusalem did not refuse Washington’s offer.” The official said Netanyahu was “willing and ready to bring it to a vote” when “the U.S. informed us, much to our surprise, that they did not want to move forward on that path.”
Sources in Washington confirm that scenario, noting that the administration, after much bargaining, concluded that extending the freeze on building in the settlements for another 90 days was not likely to produce any diplomatic results. Some add that the U.S. was upset that details of the offer were leaked in Jerusalem, and not all accurately. Netanyahu is not a favorite these days in D.C.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, Middle East peace process, settlement freeze extension
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:58 AM
1 Comments:
The US could not decide what it wanted. Netanyahu was more than willing to extend it again but the Obama Administration was not willing to put it into writing. The Israeli Left, which has assumed that Netanyahu put the kibosh to a freeze extension are dead wrong and owe him an apology.
I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.
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