Brussels, March 22: EU foreign ministers on Monday called for a total freeze on Jewish settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories, as extremist Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman visited Brussels.
“We asked for a total freeze of settlement activities and we will pursue this policy,” said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s green light for more illegal settler units is “completely unacceptable,” his Finish counterpart Alexander Stubb said.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who made her first official trip to the Middle East last week, stressed that “there has to be a recognition that the talks have to get moving.”
The talks in question are so-called “proximity talks” which means the Israeli and Palestinian representatives are in the same building, with US mediation, but not meeting face-to-face.
Israel’s Lieberman was also in Brussels for bilateral talks with his German, Italian, Dutch, Lithuanian and Maltese counterparts.
On Wednesday Netanyahu, who was in the United States Monday, is due in Brussels.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Around 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
There are about 300,000 more illegal Jewish settlers currently living in settlements the Palestinian West Bank.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to Palestinians.
—Agencies