New West Bank settlements approved

Israel has approved new housing units in the West Bank, defying the White House call to stop expanding Jewish settlements there. Is a compromise still possible? The World’s Matthew Bell reports.Listen

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. President Barack Obama has called on Israel to freeze all building activity in the West Bank settlements, but Israel said today it has approved the construction of 50 new homes in one Jewish settlement, and it’s planning on building nearly 15-hundred additional housing units. This is just another sign of how far apart the US and Israeli governments remain on the issue of settlement issue. The World’s Matthew Bell has the story.

MATTHEW BELL: Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barack plans to meet President Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in Washington tomorrow to talk about settlements. According to today’s New York Times, the two sides might be getting closer to a compromise. The paper cited anonymous Israeli sources saying Israel is willing to halt settlement building for 3 to 6 months, as part of an effort to re-start peace talks. The paper said the moratorium on settlement construction would not affect projects already under way, nor would it apply to Jewish areas in East Jerusalem. This plan, however, would require the Obama administration to back down from its call for a complete halt to settlement construction. And it also sounds unacceptable to Yuli Edelstein. He’s an Israeli cabinet minister for public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs. Using the Biblical terms for the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, Edelstein said natural growth in the settlements should continue.

YULI EDELSTEIN: The issue of population control doesn’t behoove any democratic country. And we have to understand that the legal or not legal settlements of communities, whatever terms we may use, still to basically say to Jewish women in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, you can’t give birth, and if you god forbid do give birth, there will be no kindergarten, is something unheard of in any democratic country.

MATTHEW BELL: Israeli officials say the Bush administration had quietly agreed to allow some continued growth in West Bank settlements, and Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor today alluded to that understanding.

DAN MERIDOR: The problem that needs to be resolved is not about settlements, it’s about keeping agreements.

MATTHEW BELL: But Obama administration officials don’t see things that way. Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton has dismissed the importance of any agreements made between Israel and the previous administration. Meanwhile, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said Israel must freeze all settlement growth before he agrees to restart negotiations. And today, Palestinian development minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said Israel’s decision to approve new settlement housing is a challenge to peace.

MAHAMMAD SHTAYYEH: This is a challenge to the international will that has been calling upon Israel to totally freeze all the Israeli settlement activities in the Palestinian territories. This is actually a blow, a total blow to the whole international effort to resume the biz talks, to resume the negotiations. This is an expression of a aggressive will on behalf of the Israeli government.

MATTHEW BELL: But neither the Palestinians, nor Arab governments in the region have been very forthcoming about they would do if Israel does halt settlement growth. That’s according to David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He’s co-author with White House special advisor on the Middle East, Dennis Ross, of the new book called Myths, Illusions and Peace. Makovsky says Mr. Obama went to Riyadh last month to ask the Saudis for so-called deliverables, but he didn’t come back with much.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: What will they? Will they open up a trade section in Tel Aviv? Will they agree that Allah may be can have landing rights in Saudi Arabia? Will they agree that professors from both countries can be exchanged? It doesn’t seem that, for whatever reason that that visit was a success, and it seemed that the Saudis gave the President the back of their hand.

MATTHEW BELL: Makovsky says he doesn’t doubt that president Obama believes that halting settlement growth in the West Bank would help win concessions for Israel from its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians. But Makovsky says, it’s just not yet clear what those concessions would be. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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