TEL AVIV, May 31, 2009 (WAFA)- “Tensions between the USA and Israel are growing after the US administration’s demand that Israel completely freeze construction in all Jewish colonies in the West Bank,” Haaretz Israeli daily said, sunday.
Israeli political officials expressed disappointment after Tuesday’s round of meetings in London with George Mitchell, US President Barack Obama’s envoy to the Middle East. “We’re disappointed,” said one Israeli senior official. “All of the understandings reached during the [George W.] Bush administration are worth nothing.”
Another Israeli official said the US administration is refusing every Israeli attempt to reach new agreements on Jewish colonies construction. “The United States is taking a line of granting concessions to the Palestinians that is not fair toward Israel,” he said.
The Israeli officials attributed the unyielding US stance to the speech Obama will make in Cairo this Thursday, in which he is expected to deliver a message of reconciliation to the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Mitchell was joined at the London talks by his deputy David Hale, Daniel B. Shapiro (the head of the National Security Council’s Middle East desk), and State Department deputy legal adviser Jonathan Schwartz.
The Israeli delegation consisted of an Israeli security adviser Uzi Arad, Netanyahu diplomatic envoy Yitzhak Molcho, Israeli Army Ministry chief of staff Mike Herzog and Israeli deputy prime minister Dan Meridor.
Herzog spoke to Mitchell and his staff about understandings reached by former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon with the George W. Bush administration on allowing continued building in the large West Bank colonial blocs. He asked that a similar agreement be reached with the Obama government.
Meridor spoke of the complexities characterizing the coalition headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and said Washington’s demands of a complete construction freeze would lead to the dissolution of the Netanyahu government.
The Israeli delegates were stunned by the uncompromising US stance, and by statements from Mitchell and his staff that agreements reached with the Bush administration were unacceptable. An Israeli official privy to the talks said that “the Americans took something that had been agreed on for many years and just stopped everything.”
“What about the Tenet Report, which demanded that the Palestinians dismantle the terror infrastructure?” said the official, referring to former CIA director George Tenet. “It’s unfair, and there is no reciprocity shown toward the Palestinians.”
The Israeli envoys said the demand for a total freeze of colonial activities was not only unworkable, but would not receive High Court sanction. Tensions reportedly reached a peak when, speaking of the Gaza disengagement, the Israelis told their interlocutors that they had evacuated 8,000 colonizers on their own initiative, to which Mitchell responded simply, “We’ve noted that here.”
Israeli Army Minister Ehud Barak will travel to Washington, Sunday, in an attempt to put further pressure on the Obama administration.
“We want to reach an agreement with the United States on ways to advance the peace process,” said a senior Israeli official. The US stance, he said, “will stall the process and bring about tension and stagnation, which will hurt both Israel and the United States.”
