JERUSALEM: The United States wants a four-month Israeli building freeze in occupied east Jerusalem, one several US demands aimed at reigniting dormant peace talks, media reports said on Wednesday.
In return for a Jerusalem freeze — something Israel has refused to contemplate in the past — the United States would pressure the Palestinians to hold direct talks with Israel, the Haaretz daily reported.
The paper, quoting unnamed Israeli officials, said the four-month freeze would coincide with the period the Arab League had backed for renewed indirect talks between the two sides.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned last week from a tense visit to Washington that appeared to deepen a bitter row with the administration of President Barack Obama over the building of Jewish settlements, including in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
He was reportedly given a set of demands for wide-ranging measures including the extension of a partial settlement halt and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to promote a restart of the stalled peace process.
Neither Israel nor the United States have said what the US demands are. However, Netanyahu has been meeting with his security cabinet to craft a response.
Israel’s Channel Two news, which also reported the demand for a Jerusalem freeze, said no answer was expected from Israel until the Passover holiday ends next week.
Officials in Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the reports.
The spat with Washington erupted after Netanyahu’s government announced it would build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem as US Vice President Joe Biden was in the region earlier this month hoping to promote peace talks.
The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, and have long refused to resume direct negotiations with Israel without a complete freeze of settlement construction in the occupied territories.
The two sides had agreed earlier this month to hold US-brokered indirect talks but the announcement of the settlement project during Biden’s visit brought the initiative to an abrupt halt.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas agreed to indirect talks after foreign ministers representing the 22-member Arab League gave him the green light to engage in them for four months during a meeting in Cairo on March 3.
However, a summit of Arab leaders in Libya at the weekend decided that in the wake of the Jerusalem plan there would be no support for talks without a complete settlement freeze, a position since adopted by the Palestinians.
"There must be a complete freeze of settlements in Jerusalem and in all the West Bank before returning to any negotiations, either direct or indirect," Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said in response to the Haaretz report.
"They must meet the parameters set by the Arab League… which call for clear guidelines for the peace process and the negotiations, either direct or indirect," he told AFP.
Israel has already agreed to a 10-month freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank, excluding Jerusalem. Israel views the entire city as its "eternal, undivided" capital, a claim not recognized by any other government.
And since returning from Washington, Netanyahu has said Israel would not stop building in all of Jerusalem.
"The prime minister’s position is that there is no change in Israel’s policy on Jerusalem that has been pursued by all governments of Israel for the last 42 years," his office said on Friday.
Direct negotiations have been frozen since Israel launched a devastating 22-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008 in a bid to halt rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.
