Palestine, November 01: West Bank – The Palestinians on Sunday said illegal Israeli settlement construction was the “main obstacle” to relaunching peace talks after the United States backed off from its demand for a complete freeze.
“Israel should not be given any excuse to continue building settlements, and we consider all settlement activity to be illegal,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, the spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
“This is the main obstacle in the way of peace. Israel must halt all settlement activity immediately without making excuses.”
His comments came a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged both sides to relaunch peace talks suspended at the turn of the year and said a complete settlement freeze should not be a precondition.
She also praised hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for offering an “unprecedented” restraint on settlement activity after the Obama administration had for months been calling for a complete halt to construction.
In May, following Obama’s first meeting with Netanyahu, Clinton had said Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.”
Clinton’s visit to the region came after repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell in recent months yielded little progress in the US push to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel.
Around illegal 200,000 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 almost-defenceless Palestinians.
—Agencies