U.S. pressuring Israel not to announce new settlement construction
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Source: Haaretz
According to a senior Israeli official, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, special envoy for the peace process Martin Indyk and several other senior American officials have all urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to exercise maximum restraint in announcing new construction, lest the measure undermine the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Kerry has visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority twice in the last three weeks, and had considered returning again on Thursday, on his way back to Washington from Southeast Asia. But he ultimately decided against it, and is now expected to return only in January, after the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Under the U.S.-brokered deal that enabled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to begin in July, Israel is to release four groups of Palestinian prisoners over the course of the talks, all of whom have been in jail since before the 1993 Oslo Accord was signed. The principal challenge Kerry will face in the coming weeks is the release of the third batch on December 29. When the second batch was released two months ago, Netanyahu approved the publication of tenders for 5,000 housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In response, the Palestinians suspended negotiations with Israel for two weeks and threatened to pull out of the talks altogether.
The senior Israeli official said that during both of Kerry’s last two visits, Netanyahu warned the secretary of state that Israel would announce new construction tenders to coincide with the next prisoner release as well.
Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.564252
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