A Transcript - Jerusalem & the State Dept.

From

Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary of State
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
July 20, 2009

...QUESTION: Do – Israel apparently rejected a new demand from the U.S. to stop a settlement project in East Jerusalem. Can you confirm that? Can you confirm that U.S. tried to stop this project and that it was rejected?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, I think there have been – this is not a new issue. There have been issues revolving construction in East Jerusalem have come up a number of times. I believe they came up when some of you might have been with the Secretary in the region back in February. We have made our views to – known to Israel. Our views are not new either, that this kind of construction is the type of thing that should be – is the type of issue that should be subject to permanent status negotiations, and that we are concerned that unilateral actions taken by the Israelis or the Palestinians cannot prejudge the outcome of these negotiations. That’s one of the reasons why we’re working hard through George Mitchell and others to create conditions so that you can have a resumption of negotiations that would lead the parties to address these final status issues. George Mitchell will be traveling to the region later this week. His itinerary is still not completely set, but he will be traveling to talk to Israeli officials, Palestinian officials, others in the region. I think he’s got a speech scheduled in Bahrain later this week, where I think he’ll have the opportunity to express once again our gratitude to Sheikh Salman for his message last week.

QUESTION: Can you confirm – excuse me --

QUESTION: Has he had any conversations with Ambassador Pickering about this meeting last week with Hamas leaders?



MR. CROWLEY: I think Ambassador Pickering is a private citizen. I’m not aware that we’ve had – we had any contact with him before or after that meeting.

QUESTION: Can we go back to settlements? Can you confirm that the Israel ambassador in Washington was summoned to the State Department on Friday?

MR. CROWLEY: We’ve had conversations with the Israeli ambassador recently on this and other subjects.

QUESTION: Well, can you clarify when that meeting actually was?

MR. CROWLEY: Last week sometime, I think.

QUESTION: Last week; not over the weekend?

MR. CROWLEY: No.

QUESTION: Friday --

MR. CROWLEY: Not to my knowledge.

QUESTION: And he met with who?

MR. CROWLEY: He met with a number of high-level officials, not the Secretary.

QUESTION: Deputy?

MR. CROWLEY: A number of high-level officials.

=================

He should have read this:

The Significance of 20 Units

Rick Richman - 07.20.2009 - 5:23 PM

After refusing 21 times to stand by the U.S. commitment in the 2004 letter to Israel; after reneging on six years of understandings about the meaning of a “settlement freeze”; after responding to complaints that public disputes with Israel are not conducive to peace by saying that distance from Israel is necessary; and after saying Israel needs some “serious self-reflection” because there has supposedly been “no progress” in eight years, Barack Obama chose last week — in the midst of negotiations about re-defining Israel’s freeze obligation — to enter into still another dispute with Israel: this time by defining half of Jerusalem as a “settlement” in which not even 20 new housing units can be built.

To appreciate the audacity (a better word is probably chutzpah) of Obama’s latest hope, it is necessary to recognize several points:

First, it has been U.S. policy since 1995, when Congress enacted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, that Jerusalem should be “recognized as the capital” of Israel and “remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.”

Second, in his address to a joint session of Congress in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his views on Jerusalem in terms virtually identical to those he used yesterday...

Third, the status of Jerusalem is expressly an issue to be addressed in final status negotiations under the Roadmap. It is not an issue for pre-negotiation concessions by Israel in order to get the Palestinians to enter into final status negotiations once again.

Fourth, the fact that Jerusalem is to be the subject of final status negotiations is commonly — and erroneously — assumed to mean Jerusalem is to be divided based on such negotiations. But that is the opposite of what making Jerusalem a “negotiable” issue was intended to mean. UN Resolutions 242 and 338 — the express basis of final status negotiations under the Roadmap — call for Israeli withdrawal from an unspecified portion of “territories” in exchange for recognized borders that are “secure” (which no one at the time thought meant the 1967 boundaries, with or without “minor adjustments”).

Neither Resolution 242 nor 338 mentions Jerusalem, and the omission was intentional. On March 12, 1980, Arthur J. Goldberg, who was U.S. ambassador to the UN when Resolution 242 was adopted, wrote a letter to the New York Times to “set the record straight”:

Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate. . . . In a number of speeches at the UN in 1967, I repeatedly stated that the armistice lines fixed after 1948 were intended to be temporary. This, of course, was particularly true of Jerusalem. . . . I made it clear that the status of Jerusalem should be negotiable and that the armistice lines dividing Jerusalem were no longer viable. In other words, Jerusalem was not to be divided again. [Emphasis added]

Barack Obama once supported an undivided Jerusalem. In his June 2008 speech to AIPAC, he said, “Let me be clear . . . [Jerusalem] must remain undivided” — a position he had taken in writing at least twice before. But he retracted that statement a day later and gave a series of increasingly disingenuous explanations for his retraction.

Now he wants all building within the eastern half of Israel’s capital stopped — at least all Jewish building — so he can get the Palestinians to agree to resume final status negotiations, where they will once again demand Jerusalem be divided, this time with implicit U.S. backing from a construction freeze imposed by Obama (or perhaps explicit backing from a U.S. peace plan the administration still appears to be preparing).

In a perceptive article, Elliott Abrams [below for your convenience] has explained why the Obama “settlement mania” has now created a problem not only for Israel but also for the Abba/Fayyad Palestinian Authority as well. The stakes over the dispute regarding 20 housing units are pretty large.

And for your convenience:

An Unworkable Compromise
The Palestinians lose on a ‘settlement freeze’ too.

By Elliott Abrams

Everyone knows that the Obama administration’s demands for a settlement freeze are a huge problem for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in Jerusalem. But they are also a great problem for the Abbas/Fayyad government of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

Why? Because the United States is now seeking some form of compromise, while the Palestinians are seeking a true, unalloyed, immediate, total freeze.

Having failed to bully Netanyahu into a total freeze, U.S. negotiator George Mitchell is said to be asking for a moratorium that would allow completion of all projects already underway...

...Why Netanyahu and his government loathe this entire Obama project is clear. Morally, it accepts the argument that Israelis have no right to live in the West Bank (or even some parts of Jerusalem). Politically, agreeing to any sort of “freeze” threatens the governing coalition.

...but look at what the Obama administration has done to its friends in Ramallah as well. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiator Saeb Erekat are on record demanding a total freeze — including in Jerusalem, without a time limit, all over the West Bank, every settlement, all sorts of buildings. No exceptions...Where do they stand when the United States government announces its deal...“There are no middle-ground solutions for the settlement issue: Either settlement activity stops or it doesn’t stop,” Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio last week....

...settlement construction continues as well, but the Palestinian leaders aren’t stupid; they know it’s a made-up issue. They know that life in the West Bank is getting better, the economy is improving, the Israelis are removing roadblocks and obstacles to movement — and they know that settlement construction provides badly needed employment for Palestinian construction workers. So, Mitchell’s failure would be sheer heaven for them, while a compromise — well, Erekat said it. Bad news.

...So, this Obama settlement mania will end up damaging not only Netanyahu but Abbas as well. What a triumph of American diplomacy.