Government says no to 'settlement freeze' request
On Thursday, the Israeli government refused a request from US Ambassador Dan Shapiro that Israel freeze construction in the 'settlements' in order to create 'political goodwill' for the US to oppose a 'Palestinian statehood' bid at the UN. To the credit of the US (okay, for all intents and purposes it's an election year), they said they would veto the 'statehood' bid regardless of what Israel decided on the 'settlements.' In a meeting with Interior Minister Eli Yishai, US Ambassador Dan Shapiro requested the freeze - a repeated Palestinian precondition for negotiations - in order to bolster political goodwill as the US tries to counter Palestinian efforts to seek full UN membership.Of course, the Obama administration would never do this, but what they ought to do is to say that for every day that the 'Palestinians' stay away from the talks, the US will back Israel building another 100 Jewish homes and taking control of another 1% of Area C in Judea and Samaria. That would get the 'Palestinians' back to the table in a hurry.
Shapiro promised that the United States would veto such efforts regardless of Israel's decision on settlements.
According to Army Radio, Yishai replied that no Israeli government had given in to the request to freeze settlements in the past, and that there was no reason for the current government to do so now.
Obama needs a policy that doesn't involve asking Israel for 'settlement freezes' all the time.
And someone needs to remind Yishai that we did have a 'settlement freeze' from December 2009 to October 2010, and the 'Palestinians' stayed away anyway.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Dan Shapiro, Eli Yishai, settlement freeze
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:58 PM
1 Comments:
Even if Israel granted a new freeze, it would not be enough to restart negotiations. If Abu Bluff wanted to raise it at the table, fine. But the Palestinians are adding preconditions, not to encourage peace talks but to prevent them from ever being held. We don't see Dan Shapiro and his boss try to change Palestinian obstructionism. Israel is not the reason there are no peace talks today.
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