JERUSALEM – Israel never refused to renew a freeze on settlement in the occupied West Bank but the US stopped pressuring for a new moratorium, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Israeli radio and news sites quoted him as telling parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that Washington did initially ask Israel to extend a 10-month building freeze which expired in September. “The truth is that we were prepared to do this but contrary to what was reported Israel did not refuse to extend the freeze,” Maariv daily’s “nrg” website quoted Netanyahu as telling MPs.
“In the end the United States decided not to take that path, rightly in my opinion,” he added. Israel did not publicly refuse Washington’s request and Netanyahu said at the time that he would put it to a cabinet vote if reported US incentives were put in writing, among them finance for advanced warplanes and a promise to veto any UN Security Council resolution against Israel’s interests. That letter apparently never came.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since September, with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas saying they cannot resume as long as the Israelis are building on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. Abbas has called for the international community, spearheaded by the peacemaking Quartet of the UN, the US, Russia and the European Union, to come up with a new peace plan.
“We demand that the Middle East Quartet and the various UN bodies, headed by the Security Council, draft a peace plan which conforms with international law, instead of keeping up negotiations which do not solve the problem,” he said in a televised address last week.
