World Leaders ‘Condemn’ West Bank Settlements, While Some Israelis Say Obama Is ‘Fair’

UPDATED

The international “quartet” charged by the United Nations with overseeing the Middle East peace process met in Moscow this morning and issued a strong statement against settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In speaking for the group – which includes Russia. the United States, the European Union,  and the United Nations – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the same language – “condemn”  - that Vice President Joe Biden used last week when a new Israeli settlement in Jerusalem was announced right in the middle of his visit to restart the stalled peace process: ”The quartet condemns the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem.”

Watch it on Russian television:

Meanwhile in Israel, a new poll by the respected Tel Aviv University Professor Camil Fuchs shows that 51% of the Israeli public believes that Obama is “fair.” While conservatives often claim that support for Obama in Israel is very low, this new data is consistent with a New America Foundation poll whose release I attended last December in Washington. The New America Foundation poll found that 52% of Israelis “think President Obama’s election will be good for addressing the problems facing the world.”

What happens next: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington to address the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, which will meet next week. Fox News reported last night that President Barack Obama – having cancelled a previously planned trip to the East to get health care reform passed – would be meeting with Netanyahu, but today the usually authoritative Jewish Telegraphic Agency said its reporters checked with the White House and learned that no meeting is (yet) scheduled.

As this morning’s Guardian newspaper indicates, the Quartet’s full court press in Moscow is designed to increase the pressure on Netanyahu to cancel the recently announced construction of 1,600 settlement units in East Jerusalem. (See my earlier reporting on this.) Read the full text of the Quartet statement here.

The quartet expected that talks between Israelis and Palestinians should lead to a negotiated settlement that “within 24 months” ends the occupation of Palestinian territories begun in 1967. The settlement should result “in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours”.

The quartet includes Hillary Clinton for the US; Russia’s foreign secretary, Sergei Lavrov; Tony Blair, the quartet’s special representative; and Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief.

The statement expressed deep alarm at the deteriorating situation in Gaza, urging Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip for both humanitarian and commercial traffic and calling for a “durable resolution to the Gaza crisis”.

Clinton said she had spoken last night to the Israel prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, following his apparent offer of “confidence-building measures” to encourage the renewal of peace talks. She described the conversation as “very useful and productive … We don’t believe unilateral action by any parties are helpful. We’ve made this clear.”

None of the quartet parties were willing to say what pressure they were prepared to put on Israel should it ignore today’s statement.

The quartet called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity “including natural growth”, to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001, and to “refrain from demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem”. It also appealed for the international community to back the Palestinians’ commitment to build an independent state by offering immediate and concrete support.

Will this united international pressure result in moves by Netanyahu to bring the Palestinians back to the “proximity” negotiations that were supposed to start last week? Hard to say. The Israeli PM’s office floated the idea of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about settlements yesterday via a conversation between Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, which Diehl blogged about.

If the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy means the current right-wing government will approve and build settlements without announcing them, I just don’t see how this will get the peace process going again. Two highly respected Israel-based NGOs, Ir Imim and Peace Now, make it their business to follow the issue of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements very closely – especially the ones that the government is trying to keep secret. (See my March 11 story on True/Slant citing an Ir Amim report that said the government plans to build another 50,000 settlement units in East Jerusalem.)