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Palestinians say new settlements will end talks Source: (Agencies) Palestinian leaders on Friday accepted a U.S. invitation for face-to-face peace talks with Israel but said they would withdraw if it resumed Jewish settlement building on occupied land.
The chief Palestinian negotiator said the Palestinians would pull out of the talks, due to start on Sept. 2, if the Israeli government announced any new settlement building on land where the Palestinians aim to found their state.
"If the Israeli government decides to announce new tenders on Sept. 26, then we won't be able to continue with the talks," Saeb Erekat said after a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee in Ramallah.
" If the Israeli government decides to announce new tenders on Sept. 26, then we won't be able to continue with the talks "
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb ErekatHe was referring to the date when a 10-month, Israeli freeze on settlement building in the West Bank is due to end. His comments reflected the immediate challenges facing the U.S. effort to revive the two-decade-old Middle East peace process.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads a coalition government that backs Jewish settlement on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. A majority of his seven-member inner cabinet opposes extending the settlement moratorium.
Netanyahu was quick to embrace the summit call made on Friday by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In an official statement he noted with satisfaction that her statement made no mention of Palestinian demands that talks be contingent on Israel extending a temporary freeze on Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
A minority is seeking some compromise that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might be able to swallow.
A leader of the left-wing opposition in the Israeli parliament said the latest initiative would go the way of other efforts, which petered out over the years, unless Netanyahu and the hardliners on which his coalition government leans are ready to pay more than lip-service to Palestinian aspirations.
Israeli public radio quoted Haim Oron, of the Meretz party, as praising the United States for showing "initiative and assertiveness" in nudging the two sides back to the negotiating table after a 20-month hiatus, but he added a caveat.
"Without (Israel) continuing a total freeze on settlement and a genuine readiness to withdraw to the international borders and an end to offering the Palestinians a caricature of a state it will be a waste of everybody's time," he said.
The PLO executive committee accepted the U.S. invitation to begin direct talks during an emergency meeting in Ramallah. "We hope that the Israeli government will choose peace not settlements, will choose reconciliation and not the continuation of occupation," Erekat said.
Abbas had sought a full halt to Israeli settlement building before any direct negotiations. He also had demanded a clear agenda for the talks -- demands which Palestinian critics said he failed to secure.
"Now they go to direct talks with neither," Palestinian political commentator Hany al-Masri told Reuters. "It damages the credibility of the president and the leadership," he said.
"This will help Hamas," he added. Hamas is an Islamist group that seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. It is listed as a terrorist group by Western powers and is opposed to Abbas's strategy of seeking a negotiated peace deal with Israel, to which it is deeply hostile.
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell said on Friday that the parties would determine the terms of reference and basis for negotiations when they met.
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