Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet
Palestinian National Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday,
in a bid to solve the crisis of settlement construction, local
daily Ha'aretz reported on Wednesday.
The two leaders will meet on Thursday for the first time since
the Annapolis peace summit last month, in an effort to undo a snag
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over Israeli plans to expand an
East Jerusalem settlement, Olmert's office said.
A second round of peace talks between the Israeli and
Palestinian negotiation teams concluded on Monday without yielding
results or progress. Palestinians insisted that Israel stop
settlement expansion, while Israelis demand that the Palestinians
implement reforms in security mechanisms.
Israel has expanded plans to build new homes in a disputed East
Jerusalem neighborhood as well as in a nearby settlement, according
to the Housing Ministry's proposed budget for 2008.
Earlier this month, Israel angered the Palestinians and drew
criticism from the United States when it announced plans to build
307 new apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har
Homa.
Officials in Jerusalem state that Har Homa is an integral part
of municipal Jerusalem, and not part of the Palestinian
territories.
However, the Palestinians claim that any Israeli construction
east of the Green Line, which was Israel's border before the 1967
Six-Day War, is an illegal settlement. They treat construction in
East Jerusalem much the same as they treat construction in the
settlement blocs in the West Bank.
The Palestinians said that construction in the territories is an
obstacle to peace and an act that jeopardizes the negotiations,
which was just revived in the Annapolis peace conference.
(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2007)
