U.K. Foreign Secretary urges Palestinians to rejoin peace talks

Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyau meets British Foreign Minister William Hague on November 4, 2010 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Willian Hague is on a two-day official visit to Israel his first as foreign secretary. Diplomatic tension rose after a high-level security and defence meeting was cancelled on November 3, 2010 due to a row over universal jurisdiction legislation in the UK. (Photo Moshe Milner/GPO/Getty Images)

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November 13, 2010 (KATAKAMI / HAARETZ) --- Ahead of trip to U.S. next week, William Hague calls on Mahmoud Abbas to return to stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as soon as possible.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has urged Palestinians to rejoin Middle East peace talks, before discussions in the U.S. next week. 

Hague said he told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a phone call on Saturday that he was disappointed by Israeli plans to build new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. 

But he urged Abbas to return to the stalled talks as soon as possible. He said he would discuss the situation with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during a visit to Washington next week. 

U.S.-sponsored direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down on September 26 when a 10-month Israeli freeze on West Bank settlement construction expired. Abbas has said he would not conduct peace talks with Israel while settlement construction is taking place. 

Earlier this month, Hague visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in his first visit to the region since taking office in May. (*)

Mahmoud Abbas: Israel has been taking unilateral measures for years

Palestinian Authority president responds to Netanyahu's criticism of Palestinians possibly seeking UN recognition of state; "settlements are a unilateral step done by Israel," Abbas says.

October 25, 2010 BETHLEHEM, West Bank (KATAKAMI / JPOST)   — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that Israel has been taking unilateral steps for decades by building settlements, so the Palestinians might take one of their own — asking the United Nations to recognize their independent state.

Abbas was replying to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who said the only path to peace is negotiations. The threat of unilateral action indicates the depth of the crisis over peace talks restarted just last month by US President Barack Obama.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are at the heart of the current stalemate. Netanyahu imposed a 10-month halt to new construction in settlements last November to bring Palestinians back to the table. But it took nine months of intensive US mediation to restart direct talks.

Netanyahu faced stiff opposition to the building restrictions from inside his government and said he would not renew the measure, which expired Sept. 26. Construction has begun on more than 500 new homes since then, according to settler officials and a count by The Associated Press.

Palestinians insist they will not hold talks while settlement construction continues. They have been suggesting recently that they would seek other solutions if the talks fail.

One possibility would be asking the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

That would not dislodge the Israeli military from the West Bank, dismantle the 120 Jewish settlements there or give Palestinians free access to east Jerusalem. But it could isolate Israel and change the diplomatic equation.

On Sunday, Netanyahu criticized this idea.

"I think any attempt to circumvent it by going to international bodies isn't realistic and won't advance true peacemaking in any way," Netanyahu said. "Peace will be achieved only through direct talks."

During a visit to Bethlehem on Monday, Abbas responded that Israel has been taking unilateral measures in the West Bank for decades — especially by building settlements.

"Settlements are a unilateral step done by Israel," Abbas said. "Is there anything clearer than settlements and invasions and roadblocks and all that has been done on Palestinian land?"

Given that reality, Abbas said, Netanyahu should not lecture the Palestinians about a step they might take in the future, "which is to resort to the United Nations."

Palestinian officials have mentioned this possibility before, but Abbas' statement was a rare on-the-record reference to the idea.

Abbas and Saudi king discuss stalled peace talks

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R) speaks to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Riyadh October 22, 2010. (Getty Images / REUTERS/Saudi Press Agency/Handout )

October 22, 2010 (KATAKAMI / FRANCE24 / AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas held talks on Friday with King Abdullah that focused on the stalled peace process with Israel, the official Saudi news agency SPA reported.

They discussed “developments in the Palestinian issue and efforts exerted to put the peace process back on the right path,” it said.

The two leaders also discussed the “need for the international community to assume responsibility to achieve a just and comprehensive peace that would guarantee the Palestinian people’s right to establish its independent state on its national soil, with Jerusalem as a capital,” it added.

Abbas left Riyadh on Friday afternoon, the agency added.

A Palestinian diplomat in Riyadh told AFP Thursday that Abbas’s visit “comes at a critical stage in the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

The diplomat pointed to Israel’s refusal to extend a moratorium on Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem that expired on September 26.

On October 9, foreign ministers of the Arab League, in which Saudi Arabia plays a leading role, said they would wait one more month to see if the direct peace talks can be restarted.

Since the settlement moratorium ended, Jewish settlers have begun building at least 600 homes, a pace four times faster than before the freeze began last year, the Israeli activist group Peace Now said on Thursday.

Abbas told Arab summit Israel has 'cancelled Oslo': aide

President Mahmoud Abbas attends Arab League Summit, October 09, 2010 in Sirte, Libya. (Getty Images)

October 11, 2010 (KATAKAMI / FRANCE 24 / AFP)  - Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas told Arab leaders over the weekend that Israel has in effect scrapped the landmark 1993 Oslo autonomy accords, an aide said on Monday.

"Abbas affirmed to the Arabs that Israel has effectively cancelled the Oslo agreement and the other agreements it has signed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)," chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.

He went on to accuse Israel of having stripped the Palestinian Authority of much of its limited powers in the occupied territories and of "intruding on a daily basis" into areas governed by the Palestinians, Erakat said.
"If Israel does not respect agreements or adhere to implementing them then how can the PLO and the Palestinian Authority adhere to them?" he asked.


The 1993 Oslo accords formally launched the peace process based on autonomy and led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, which was to govern parts of the occupied West Bank and Gaza until a final agreement.

But after nearly two decades of sputtering talks Israel and the Palestinians remain bitterly divided on core issues and Abbas has refused to negotiate without a complete freeze of Jewish settlement building on Palestinian lands.

Erakat said that Abbas, at the Arab summit in the Libyan city of Sirte, also spelled out several alternatives to direct negotiations should Israel continue to build in the occupied territories.

One option would have the Palestinians demand US recognition of a state in the Palestinian territories occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

Abbas said other options include demanding full membership from the UN General Assembly and the Security Council or requesting an international mandate to govern the Palestinian territories, Erakat said.

"Abbas did not say he would resign or dissolve the Palestinian Authority," Erakat said, referring to far more drastic steps to which the Palestinians have alluded in the past.

"But he said that since Israel has cancelled the Oslo accords and the other agreements and stripped the power of the Palestinian Authority over Palestinian lands, why should it remain in place?"

The latest round of peace talks was relaunched on September 2 in Washington but ground to a halt when a 10-month partial moratorium on Israeli settlements expired on September 26.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to extend the restrictions, a move opposed by much of his right-wing-led coalition, but he has encouraged the Palestinians to stick to the talks.

Arab League urges US to call halt on Israeli settlements

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, center, listens to Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem, right and Amr Moussa, Secretary general of the Arab League, during the Arab Foreign Ministers Peace Initiative meeting, in Sirte, Libya, Friday, Oct. 8, 2010. (Getty Images)


October 09, 2010 (KATAKAMI) -- Arab foreign ministers have given the US another month to persuade Israel to halt settlement activity in the occupied territories – backing the decision by Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to suspend peace talks.

Talks in Libya produced a statement by the Arab League last night urging the Obama administration to carry on working for an extension of Israel's 10-month settlement freeze, which expired last month, so that the already faltering negotiations can continue.

Abbas had urged ministers of the 22-member league to back his call for more time before pronouncing the talks a failure, as many observers predict they eventually will be.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who chaired the meeting in the coastal town of Sirte, told reporters: "The committee endorses the decision of President Abbas to stop the talks. It urges the American side to pursue efforts to resume the peace process and put it back on the right track, including stopping settlements."

The league committee will meet again within one month to study alternatives proposed by Abbas.
The effect of the Arab decision is to allow the quest for negotiations to go into extra time despite what had appeared to be an early and potentially terminal crisis over the ever-intractable settlement issue.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were ceremonially relaunched early last month in Washington and just two working sessions were held in Egypt and Jerusalem before the expiry of the settlement moratorium.
The US has urged Israel to extend it, but the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to do so, arguing that the housing needs of Jewish settlers were simply a matter of "natural growth" and blaming the Palestinians for making an unreasonable demand.

Abbas and other Palestinian officials had made clear they would not be able to carry on negotiating with Israel without an extension of the freeze, even for two or three months.

Palestinians see the presence of 500,000 Israelis in some 120 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a threat to the viability of their future state and a freeze as a key test of Israel's good faith.

Diplomats and analysts say that while both sides are deeply pessimistic about prospects for success, neither wishes to be blamed for the collapse of the peace process. That would be a grave blow to US prestige and risk political chaos and a possible slide into violence on the ground.

"There are no talks at the moment because the position of the Israelis is very, very negative," said the Arab League's Egyptian secretary-general, Amr Moussa. "They are not cooperating in the negotiations."

Abbas's position was backed by Egypt and Jordan, which both have peace treaties with Israel, as well as Saudi Arabia and most Gulf states, which do not. But Libya and Syria have reservations. Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, conspicuously stated away from the Sirte meeting.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, meanwhile, Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians who were described as members of the military wing of Hamas, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. The two were reportedly part of the cell responsible for an attack which killed four Israeli settlers on the eve of the relaunch of the talks.


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Abbas threatens to resign if peace talks fail

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel (C), Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama talk after they delivering remarks to the press following their individual meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington on September 1, 2010.

October 08, 2010 [KATAKAMI / RANTBURG /Al Arabiya] Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas signaled his intention to resign if US peace talks with Israel fail, a front man for the Paleostinian National Council (PNC) said Thursday.

In a PNC meeting early this week, President Abbas said, "I may be sitting on this (presidency) chair only for another week," according to Khalid Mismar.

A senior Paleostinian official said on Thursday he saw no hope of a serious peace processor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in some of the darkest comments to date on the U.S.-mediated talks.

A senior Paleostinian official said on Thursday he saw no hope of a serious peace processor with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in some of the darkest comments to date on the U.S.-mediated talks.

Yasser Abed Rabbo's remarks signaled deep Paleostinian skepticism about the outlook for the talks, which began on Sept. 2 but have been on hold since an Israeli moratorium on new settlement building in the West Bank expired last week.

The United States wants the talks to continue and has been trying to find a formula to save the negotiations.

"There will be no serious political process while Netanyahu's government pursues settlements," Abed Rabbo told Voice of Paleostine radio.

"I can go further still and say that there will be no serious political process with Netanyahu's government."

Netanyahu, who heads a cabinet dominated by pro-settler parties, including his own Likud, has said he will not extend the freeze which his government had enforced for 10 months.

Abbas and Netanyahu met three times before the end of the moratorium. The Paleostine Liberation Organization (PLO) said on Saturday talks would not resume until Israel halted settlement building on land where the Paleostinians aim to found a state.

The United States and European Union had called on Israel to extend the settlement freeze. The expiry of the moratorium had been seen as an early obstacle facing U.S. President Barack B.O. Obama's push to end the six-decade-old conflict within a year.