Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded an unusually low-key US visit on Tuesday voicing confidence that his White House talks had helped secure Israel and promote peace efforts. Netanyahu, whose ties with Washington have been strained by Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank where Palestinians seek statehood, met US President Obama with little notice and minimal media exposure on Monday.
“It was a very focused and very positive conversation,” he told reporters before departing.
“This conversation dealt with the range of subjects that are important for the security of Israel, and for our joint efforts to advance peace,” Netanyahu added.
He did not elaborate, saying only: “I think this visit will turn out to have been very important.” Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president supported by the US, has accused Washington of failing to press Israel strongly for a freeze on settlements as mandated by a 2003 peace “road map” and says he has no desire to run for re-election in January.
This has put a further obstacle in the path of Obama’s bid to promote talks between Netanyahu’s rightist government and a Palestinian movement divided between Abbas’ secular rule and Islamist Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said on Tuesday that Abbas could quit, leading to a potential collapse of the Palestinian Authority, if US efforts to re-launch Middle East peace talks stay deadlocked.
The move could hand Israel a major problem since a total breakdown of efforts to achieve a two-state solution could lead to pressure for Palestinians to become equal-rights citizens.
Israel has already rejected that concept, saying it would threaten the Jewish character of the state.
“President Abbas is not playing games and he is not going to hold on to the presidency just for the title,” Erakat told AFP.
“If President Abbas feels that his project of establishing a Palestinian state is in danger and that Israel wants to destroy the idea of a Palestinian state, then I think he will not remain in the position of the presidency.
“If there is not going to be a Palestinian state, then there is not going to be a Palestinian Authority,” Erakat said.
Yuli Edelstein, an Israeli Cabinet minister accompanying Netanyahu, said in a radio interview that the White House meeting had included a discussion of Iran, whose nuclear program and support for Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbullah are cited by Israel as obstacles to peacemaking.
Israel backs efforts by the United States and other powers to talk Tehran into curbing nuclear projects with bomb-making potential. But the Israelis, assumed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arms, have not ruled out pre-emptive military action.
Netanyahu has proposed temporarily limiting building in West Bank settlements to 3,000 houses. He has said East Jerusalem, captured in a 1967 war and occupied by Israel in defiance of international law, must be kept out of the equation.
“My goal is not negotiations for the sake of negotiations. My goal is to achieve a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians – and soon,” Netanyahu told a conference of American Jewish leaders on Monday.
“Let’s get on with it. Let’s move,” he said, an exhortation cautiously echoed by the Obama administration in easing its public pressure on Israel over the settlements.
Palestinians want to base their own future capital in Jerusalem and see the settlements – which the World Court has branded illegal – as an obstacle to territorial sovereignty.
Israel’s posture drew a rebuke from France, where Netanyahu stops Wednesday for talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Asked about the settlements in an interview, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said: “There is a real difference of opinion on this [between Sarkozy and Netanyahu].” – Reuters, AFP
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