Olmert under fire over settlements ahead of U.S. visit
JERUSALEM —
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a chorus of international criticism over his government’s plans to expand Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem on Monday as he prepared for a U.S. visit.
Olmert held talks with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas ahead of his departure for Washington but they were overshadowed by Palestinian anger at the settlement expansion plans, announced ahead of the 41st anniversary on Monday of Israel’s occupation of the city’s eastern sector.
Even key ally Washington criticized the plans to build 884 new homes in two east Jerusalem settlements.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “We don’t believe that any more settlements should be built” because “it exacerbates the tensions when it comes to the negotiations with the Palestinians.”
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Israel’s plans were both “contrary to international law and to its commitments” under the peace process with the Palestinians resumed at an international conference in the U.S. city of Annapolis last November.
After the meeting between Abbas and Olmert, Palestinian senior negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters that the Israeli settlement expansion plans were threatening U.S.-backed plans to reach a peace deal by the end of the year.
“Israel must adhere to what it agreed to at Annapolis to stop all settlement activity,” Erakat said.
“We want to reach a peace agreement before the end of 2008 but there is this continuing Israeli contradiction between pursuing the peace process and imposing facts on the ground.”
Israel put a brave face on the progress of the peace talks which have achieved few visible results since their resumption seven months ago.
“I can say unequivocally that there was progress reached at this meeting today,” Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev told journalists after the two-hour meeting with Abbas.
“They discussed a range of issues. They reviewed the progress of the negotiations and the two leaders reiterated their commitment to try to reach a historic agreement by the end of the year.”
But the Islamist Hamas movement which has controlled the Gaza Strip since ousting troops loyal to the Palestinian president last June called the talks “a farce.”
Hamas, which won an upset victory in 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, accused Abbas of “lending legitimacy” to the Israeli settlements by meeting Olmert one day after the new projects were announced.
In a speech later in the day marking Jerusalem Day, Olmert further courted Palestinian anger by insisting that “historic and holy Jerusalem” would remain Israeli in perpetuity.
“Israeli sovereignty over historic and holy Jerusalem will last for eternity. Jerusalem constitutes the heart of the Jewish people,” Olmert said.
“After thousands of years, Jerusalem resumed its position as the center for the Jewish people. It’s a return that is not going to be thrown into question.”
The Palestinians insist that any peace deal must be based on the 1967 borders and demand east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
But Olmert insisted that he saw “no contradiction between the complete dedication of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and our aspirations for peace” with the Palestinians.
In 1980, Israel adopted a basic law making the city its “eternal, undivided capital” but the move has never been recognised by the international community, which regards all settlements on occupied Palestinian land as illegal.
The Israeli premier has been seriously weakened at home by a string of corruption allegations, the latest of which sparked calls for his resignation even from within his own governing coalition.
Olmert, 62, is accused of unlawfully accepting large sums of money from a U.S. millionaire before becoming premier in 2006, although he denies any wrongdoing.
The White House insisted that Olmert’s difficulties would not affect the peace process.
“It’s the Israeli people and the Palestinian people that are working toward this goal, and so it’s bigger than just any one person,” its spokeswoman said.
“As far as I know, the Israelis and the Palestinians have continued to have talks in good faith while all of the discussion in the press has gone on in Israel,” Perino added.
Erakat said the political crisis was an internal matter but added that “whenever there are internal political problems in Israel it reflects on the Palestinians and is translated into an escalation in (Israeli) aggression.”
AFP
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netrek
Cool.
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adaydream
Isreal has no plans for peace. Ohmert is looking for a way to keep the unrest going.
So Hamas was the elected group in leadership? That means that they should be in the meetings? Ohmert is taking advantage of an Isreali steal that has never been recogonized by the international community.
This is the same group that wants to bomb Iran. < :-)
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SuperLib
Olmert needs to go. Period. The only thing that worries me is stalling the peace talks that are going on with Syria now.
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GrouchyGaijin
And, bad as Olmert is, just look at who they're tipping as the successor, http://mparent7777-1.livejournal.com/343271.html The frontrunner to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, was a Paris agent for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in the early 1980s when it ran a series of missions to kill Palestinian terrorists in European capitals, according to former colleagues quoted by the Sunday Times.
"They say Livni, now foreign minister, was on active service when Mamoun Meraish, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was shot dead by a Mossad hit squad in Athens on August 21, 1983. She was not directly involved in the killing, in which two young men on a motorcycle drew alongside Meraish’s car and opened fire, but her role in Mossad remains secret," Times said. I guess you have to prove yourself with blood to get that job. Other peoples' blood.
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Helter_Skelter
Another delusional leftist believing the return of land by Israel will bring peace. Anyway, there are plenty of Jihadists to keep the unrest going. Israel isn't returning control of East Jerusalem to the Muslim Arabs, nor should it. Muslim Arabs have to accept that there are consequences to their intolerance and violence against the Infidel. Deal with it.
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skipthesong
So Hamas was the elected group in leadership? That means that they should be in the meetings? Ohmert is taking advantage of an Isreali steal that has never been recogonized by the international community."
Well, the KKK has had their people elected to positions of leadership too, are you going to talk to them? So why don't you just stop with "Hamas was elected" blah. The Nazi were elected too. I like how you make sure Hamas is to be recognized, but refuse to recognize the state of Israel.
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super delegate
"They say Livni, now foreign minister, was on active service when Mamoun Meraish, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was shot dead by a Mossad hit squad in Athens on August 21, 1983. She was not directly involved in the killing, in which two young men on a motorcycle drew alongside Meraish’s car and opened fire, but her role in Mossad remains secret," Times said."
Cool.
Force is about all the "Palestinians" understand.
They love their misery.
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adaydream
How many resolutions against Iraq did the US and my dear war-mongers like to tell me about? I remember hearing day after day about these resolutions that we kept flaunting as a reason to attack Iraq. There were several resolutions I know, but were there as many as GrouchyGaijin posted? < :-)
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bebert
I say, keep building. That will make the future pograms that much more amusing. Once again, history repeats itself.
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