Home > Politics > Political Punch
Political Punch
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

« Previous | Main | Next »

Clinton and Israeli FM Butt Heads on Settlements; Report Says a Deal May be Underway

June 17, 2009 5:43 PM

Kiritblogpic ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: The US has ratcheted up the rhetoric in recent weeks, demanding that Israel halt settlement construction in the West Bank, including so-called "natural growth" of existing sites, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference to the new right-wing Israeli government.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a major policy speech Sunday that Israel maintains the right to the natural expansion of settlements, essentially rejecting the US calls for a building freeze.

Today, the difference of opinion was on full display when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with her Israeli counterpart, the nationalistic Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who himself lives in a settlement community.

"We really don't have any intention to change the demographic balance in Judea and Samaria," Lieberman said. "We cannot accept this vision about absolutely, completely freezing of settlements. I think that we must keep the natural growth."

Clinton didn't flinch, saying: "We want to see a stop to the settlements. We think that is an important and essential part of pursuing the efforts leading to a comprehensive peace agreement and the creation of a Palestinian state next to a Israeli Jewish state that is secure in its borders and future."

The clash has led to some rare tension in the US-Israeli relationship, and was amplified over Israeli anger that the Obama administration does not recognize, or even acknowledge the existence of, what Israel says was a handshake agreement with the Bush administration to allow settlement activity to continue.

"We have some understandings with the previous administration, and we tried to keep this direction," Lieberman said today.

"In looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility," Clinton said in response.

Dov Weisglass, former Chief of Staff to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wrote in an op-ed on June 2 that President Bush wrote a letter to Sharon in 2004 that recognized Israel's right to settlement construction.

Not to be outdone, Daniel Kurtzer, the US Ambassador to Israel at the time, wrote his own op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday disputing that account.

Kurtzer said agreements were never codified and would have only allowed for settlement growth within a specified perimeter.

"Throughout this period, the Bush administration did not regularly protest Israel's continuing settlement activity. But this is very different from arguing that the United States agreed with it," Kurtzer wrote.

Still, some sort of deal may be afoot. Michael Oren, the incoming Israeli ambassador to Washington, said yesterday that there could be some compromise in the works.

"I think there is flexibility on both sides. and I'm confident that we can work this out. I think that both the Obama administration and Israel want to move forward on the peace process. We don't want to get caught up in this issue," Oren told The Associated Press.

An Israeli official told ABC News today that talks are ongoing that could lead to a compromise on settlements.

Yesterday US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell told reporters that unspecified reports that the US could allow natural growth of settlements "highly inaccurate."

Mitchell refused, however, to be pinned down on a definition of natural growth.

He will travel to Paris next week to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, their second meeting in three weeks.

In his speech on Sunday, Netanyahu for the first time endorsed the notion of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, but he placed a number of conditions for Israel to allow that to happen, including that such a state be demilitarized, that will be nonstarters for the Palestinian side.

Asked how progress can be made in such an atmosphere, Clinton reached back into the history books to say past Israeli leaders have changed their positions to accommodate negotiations.

"I personally have known such prime ministers, from Labor, Likud and Kadima, who started in one place but, in the process of evaluating what was in the best interest of Israel … have moved to positions that they never would have thought they could have advocated before they started looking hard and thinking hard about what the future should be," she said.

"I leave that to them to decide. I'm just reflecting on history and on people who've been in these positions over the last 30, 40 years," Clinton replied when asked if this was a subtle message to Netanyahu and Lieberman.

June 17, 2009 in Middle East Peace Process | Permalink | Share | User Comments (11)

User Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

A precondition, that the 23rd Arab state must be demilitarised is nothing more than shortsighted stupidity, or insanity, because as soon as this terrorist State will appear, they will become a Hamas-stan with support of Iran and Russia. Russian nukes are already in Syria on Russian submarines and other Navy. Netanyahu is not familiar with pre-WWII history, when Germany also was demilitarised, but Soviet Union did training and education of German officers and soldiers, produced for Germany military equipment, including tanks, planes, chemical weapons according to German know-how, etc. Exactly the same will happen with the Hamas-stan. in addition to it, Moscow together with Iran will create from Jerusalem a "new" divided "Berlin" in face of the US hegemony in the Middle East.

Posted by: Maccabee | Jun 19, 2009 4:07:39 AM

ta in la... ummmmm, NO!!!

Posted by: Parallex View | Jun 18, 2009 6:22:17 PM

Give them back their land!

Posted by: ta_in_la | Jun 18, 2009 5:22:20 PM

I'd like to write a comment refuting the simplistic, inaccurate, & biased comments but the last time I made a comment on this subject, based on verifiable facts, giving the source of my information, the comment was deleted.
It's nice to know that ''liberals'' are such staunch defenders of free speech.
This will probably be deleted as well.

Posted by: Terry, Eilat - Israel | Jun 18, 2009 5:27:56 AM

In the last 'encounter' (with the Gaza Strip), Israel was able to kill arabs at the rate of about 1350 dead arabs to 13 dead Israelis.

That's why Israel presumes to construct settlements on land that is not Israel's.

Posted by: danita | Jun 17, 2009 8:41:46 PM

America is a large settlement on expropriated land.

Posted by: Brad Brzezinski | Jun 17, 2009 8:18:31 PM

There was no agreement, because any such agreement would be in violation of the law. There is no such thing as a "legal settlement" on expropriated land.

Posted by: Flash Override | Jun 17, 2009 7:55:26 PM

What an unexpected duo.

Posted by: MarkLeavenworth | Jun 17, 2009 7:11:23 PM

It seems there was more than one nation planning to play-up US meddling, one before the chaos, and one after.

Posted by: MarkLeavenworth | Jun 17, 2009 7:10:22 PM

There's only one country that has been abusing its friendly relations with us to undermine our own national interests to such and extent. There is no other nation I can think of that would willingly push a friendship to the brink of destroying it for the sake of getting the most out of it. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems their calculations are to advance until we make our demands on them, and then back-peddle. The majority of Americans don't sever relationships for those kinds of behaviors in friends, but many do. We'll see.

Posted by: MarkLeavenworth | Jun 17, 2009 7:03:22 PM

If I remember correctly, Obama is the president who said the U.S. was discontinuing meddling in the affairs of other countries. Indeed it seems to be doing just that in the case of Iran, a country that calls itself at war with the U.S.

Odd how there's only one country of which the U.S. is in fact making demands.

Posted by: Brad Brzezinski | Jun 17, 2009 6:52:32 PM

Post a comment





 

POLITICAL VIDEOS