Washington, November 09: The meeting between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 9 is likely to further infuriate the Palestinians.
The Palestinians are already frustrated with Obama’s shift in policy to allow expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, labeled by many countries as illegal.
The Palestinians say Israel has deeply encroached into land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Recently, a top advisor to Palestinian Authority caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad accused US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being compensated by Israel for urging the Palestinian side to resume peace talks without preconditions.
On November 4, Omar Hilmi al-Ghul said that Clinton was being bribed by “the Zionists” to support their interests in her attempts to revive the long-stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
Obama and Netanyahu are scheduled to confer in the White House on Monday evening, (November 9), but there is no immediate information about what would be on their agenda.
Netanyahu has openly rejected calls for a freeze in construction of settlements and has said it should not be a precondition to restarting peace talks.
The settlement issue is a major obstacle in the peace process and has opened the most serious rift in Israel’s relations with the United States in a decade.
—–Agencies