ME peace talks suspended: Palestinian Negotiator

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath on Tuesday said that the there will be no new rounds of direct peace talks with Israel unless a solution on Jewish settlement building is reached.

US envoy George Mitchell arrived in the Middle East on Tuesday to try to rescue the peace talks, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded the renewal of a moratorium on Israeli settlements.

Abbas said he will not respond to the move until he meets with the Palestinian leadership this week and Arab foreign ministers on Monday, but that settlements should be halted for the duration of the peace talks.

“We demand a moratorium for as long as there are negotiations, because for as long as there are negotiations there is hope,” he told a French radio station on Tuesday during a visit to Paris.

“We don't want to stop these negotiations, but if settlement building continues, we will be obliged to stop,” Abbas said.

Sha’ath, also member of Fatah's Central Committee, said in a statement that the direct peace talks, which the US relaunched on Sept. 2, will remain suspended “as long as the Israeli government doesn't stop settlement construction.” On Sunday, Israel ended a 10-month partial moratorium on building in the West Bank settlements, provoking the Palestinian Authority (PA), which had threatened to pull out of the talks with Israel if the moratorium would not be extended. The United States and the European Union have also called on Israel to renew the building freeze.

Sha’ath said that the Palestinian leadership was hoping to hear an Israeli decision extending the moratorium by Oct. 4, when the Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo to assess the negotiations and decide on their future. The Palestinian negotiator stressed that the Palestinians will not accept any middle-ground compromise to the settlement.

“There is no alternative to one formula ending this crisis: the full stopping of the settlement building, even for a specific time.”

The development came as Mitchell was expected to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday and Abbas in the West Bank on Thursday but, as on previous visits, he was unlikely to comment publicly on the content of the talks.

Meanwhile, Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Palestinian negotiators had “wasted time” during the moratorium but added that it was important to "keep the political process alive.”

For “nine months the Palestinians wasted time and completely refused to accept this gesture and accused Israel that it's a fraud, it's not serious,” Lieberman said after meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Meanwhile, the founder of Israel Land Fund Aryeh King on Tuesday announced that building of dozens of housing units for Jewish occupier in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah will begin soon.

King said that the decision of Israeli High Court of Justice has “prevented the owners from using land they owned for almost 10 years. Now that things have changed, we'll be able to begin building.”

— Arabnews.com - With input from agencies

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