Israeli right cuts Biden's legs away

[David Guyatt]

US and Israel in stand-off over settler homes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...homes.html

US and Israel in stand-off over settler homes

The diplomatic stand-off between the US and Israel continued on Wednesday as both sides waited for signs the other would give way in the row over plans for new settler homes in East Jerusalem.

By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Published: 5:56PM GMT 17 Mar 2010



Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: AP
Benjamin Netanyahu delayed responding to Hillary Clinton's demands that he scrap the proposal for 1,600 buildings as the battle of wills escalated.
The Israeli prime minister had been expected to tell the US secretary of state yesterday whether he would accept a series of conditions designed to assuage American anger and revive the peace process.

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But as the Obama administration appeared to soften its stance in the row, Mr Netanyahu remained silent.
Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish foreign minister, indicated that Israel would never countenance an end to settlement construction in East Jerusalem.
"This demand to forbid Jews from building in East Jerusalem is totally unacceptable," he said at a joint press conference with Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign minister.
Mrs Clinton is expected to call Mr Netanyahu over the next 24 hours, US officials said. But with appetite for a prolonged dispute with Israel apparently waning, there seemed little prospect of a repeat of the angry lecture Mrs Clinton gave the prime minister last Friday.
In what has been interpreted as a conciliatory gesture, Mr Netanyahu did speak to Joe Biden, the US vice president whose visit to the Holy Land last week set the scene for the worst diplomatic spat between the United States and Israel in a generation. The contents of the discussion were not disclosed.
Mr Biden was in Jerusalem to announce the beginning of indirect talks between the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships, but his trip was soured with announcement of the settler homes plan.
After a series of public rebukes in which the United States made it clear that Israel had "insulted" its vice president, Mrs Clinton demanded Mr Netanyahu cancel the expansion and make a public gesture to win back Palestinian confidence in the talks.
In the past 48 hours, however, Mrs Clinton has toned down her language by stressing America's "unshakeable bond" with Israel. The change in rhetoric came after two dozen Congressmen, many of them Democrats, wrote to President Barack Obama demanding that he put an end to the vilification of Israel. :adore:$$$$
Even so, Mrs Clinton looks unlikely to let the Israeli prime minister off the hook entirely and she will seek the backing of the Quartet negotiating group – comprising the US, the United Nations, the EU and Russia – when it meets in Moscow on Friday.
Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian leader, has said he will reverse his acceptance of indirect negotiations until all Jewish settlement expansion in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War, was halted.
Mr Obama himself is said to have grown increasingly convinced that further paralysis in the Middle East peace process could risk the lives of US soldiers overseas.
He was warned by Gen David Petraeus, commander of US security interests in the Middle East, last week that the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks had created a sense in the Arab world that America is incapable of standing up to Israel.

Standing up to the Israeli lobby more like it.