Mideast peace
August 25, 2009
Netanyahu heads to Europe on Monday for talks on US-backed efforts to halt Jewish settlement activity in occupied territory in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.
Israel appears to have agreed to a six-month halt to construction, but Washington is pressing for a two-year freeze. The hardline Likud Party leader has insisted on continuing projects that are already under construction.
Netanyahu has demanded that any settlement deal be linked to initial steps by Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel. Around 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem.
On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, will also be in London to discuss ways of kick-starting the stalled Middle East peace process.
Netanyahu has developed a three-way approach aimed at resuming peace talks with the Palestinians that calls for greater efforts to crack down on Palestinian militants, improved economic development and negotiations towards a two-state solution in which any Palestinian state would be demilitarized.
On the eve of Netanyahu's European trip, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Israel was making a "sincere and serious effort" to reach what he called a "package of understandings" with Washington on Israel's contentious settlements policy.
"We continue to work to try to find the common ground we seek with the Americans. We are not there, but we are getting close," an Israeli official said in Tel Aviv.
Israeli-Swedish ties sour over newspaper report
Netanyahu's visit to London and Berlin coincides with a row between Israel and Sweden, the current EU president, over a newspaper article that claimed that Israeli soldiers took organs from Palestinians who died in custody.
The article, published in the August 17 edition of the Aftonbladet newspaper accused the Israeli authorities of returning the bodies of Palestinians detained in the occupied West Bank to their families with missing organs. It was linked to recent arrests in the US state of New Jersey of several US Jews, including rabbis, for crimes including brokering the sale of organs for transplant.
Netanyahu told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel was asking "not for an apology, but for a condemnation".
Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz of Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party said the accusations were reminiscent of medieval anti-semitism.
"In the Middle Ages the slander was spread accusing Jews of preparing Passover matza with the blood of Christian children. And today it is the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldiers who are accused of killing Palestinian to take their organs," said Steinitz.
Although the incident is threatening to sour relations with Israel, the Swedish government has refused to intervene, citing freedom of the press.
"As a member of the Swedish government, acting on the Swedish constitution I have to respect the freedom of the speech, irrespective of the personal views that I might have," said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
The comments came two weeks before Bildt is to visit Israel.
"There is no question of canceling or delaying this visit, but it is clear that this incident will cast a worrying shadow over meetings if it is not resolved," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
nrt/nk/dpa/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Chuck Penfold