Middle East peace efforts 'collapsing'

Monday 02 November 2009
by Tom Mellen

Arab League chief Amr Moussa has warned that US efforts to resuscitate the Middle East peace process are on the brink of total collapse because of Washington's failure to secure an Israeli settlement freeze.

His comments followed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement of a U-turn in US policy in Jerusalem on Saturday, where she said a freeze on construction of illegal settlements was no longer a precondition for the resumption of peace talks.

"The Americans couldn't bring something serious," Mr Moussa said at a press conference before a regional economic conference in Marrakesh.

"I'm really afraid we're about to see failure - failure is in the atmosphere," he warned.

At the weekend Ms Clinton called for a quick resumption of peace negotiations and lauded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's commitment to a partial halt of construction in the West Bank.

"The Israelis have responded to the call of the US, the Palestinians and the Arab world to stop settlement activity by expressing a willingness to restrain settlement activity," she said.

"This offer falls far short of what our preference would be but, if it is acted upon, it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements and would have a significant and meaningful effect on restraining their growth," Ms Clinton insisted.

Mr Netanyahu has proposed "limiting building" for 3,000 new settler homes already approved by Israel in the West Bank, but he does not regard building homes for Israeli settlers in occupied east Jerusalem as settlement activity.

But Mr Moussa said that if there were no settlement freeze, "there is no logic, what would we be negotiating?"

He warned that if the Israelis continued their settlements and "enjoy protection against international law, then so be it, but then there can be no normalization."

He claimed that Israel was changing the "demographic make-up, the geographic character of the occupied territories" by expelling people from their homes. In Jerusalem "you'll see families living in the street, outside their apartments which belong to them but from which they've been expelled. Is that a prelude to peace or an environment which could lead us to a just peace?" he said.