Israel says it is ‘disappointed’ by the Brazilian government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
The Israelis accused Brazil of going against the efforts to find ‘peace’ in the Middle East.
A letter by outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to Palestinian Authority head Mahmud Abbas, backing a Palestinian state was published by Brazil’s foreign ministry last Friday.
Brazil said that President Lula’s letter followed a personal request made by Mahmud Abbas on November 24.
The move by Brazil comes as peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians teetered on the brink of collapse following Israel’s decision to carry on with illegal settlement building in the West Bank instead of maintaining a ‘freeze’ on such settlements.
Abbas says he will not return to negotiations while Israel continues to build on land the Palestinians want for a future state.
But Israel has so far refused to impose any new curb on settlement building.
Israel’s foreign ministry responded that: ‘Recognition of a Palestinian state is a breach of the interim agreement which was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1995, which said that the issue of the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be discussed and resolved through negotiations.’
Such a move, added Israel, was also against the 2003 Middle East ‘roadmap’, which said a Palestinian state could only be established through negotiations and not through unilateral actions.
‘Every attempt to bypass this process and to decide in advance in a unilateral manner about important issues which are disputed, only harms trust between the sides, and hurts their commitment to the agreed framework of negotiating towards peace,’ said the Israelis.
Since it occupied the West Bank in 1967, Israel has set up more than 130 settlements in the territory – excluding annexed East Jerusalem. The West Bank settlements now have more than 300,000 residents.
The majority of Jewish settlers live in eight large settlements which Israel wants to annex in any lasting peace agreement with the Palestinians.
The largest settlements are close to the border between Israel and the West Bank. But Ariel lies deep inside Palestinian territory.
Modiin Ilit: a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews, located due west of the West Bank city of Ramallah has a population 45,000.
Beitar Ilit: an ultra-Orthodox settlement due west of of Bethlehem has 36,400 settlers.
Maale Adumim: a dormitory town located east of Jerusalem was the first West Bank settlement to be granted city status. It has a population of 35,000.
Ariel has 18,000 settlers.
Construction in the settlements has continued virtually uninterrupted since 1967.
In 1977, there were 31 settlements with a combined population of 4,400; by 1992 the number had risen to 120 with 100,000 inhabitants – by the end of 2009, the settler population of the West Bank had reached 306,000.
There are another nine settlements, or settler neighbourhoods, in annexed East Jerusalem, which are home to around 190,000 people.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in the Jordanian capital Amman last Saturday that his country backed ‘all efforts to support and promote peace and stability’ in the Middle East.
His Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Jawdeh, spoke about ‘the need to create suitable conditions to allow the resumption of direct negotiations . . . which requires that Israel stop unilateral measures, in particular the illegal construction of settlements.’
The American-organised direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority broke up when the Israelis lifted the ‘freeze’ on West Bank settlements.
Last Thursday, a Palestinian official said Washington had officially informed them that attempts to secure a new Israeli settlement freeze had failed, but US officials have refused to confirm or deny the report.
German minister Westerwelle arrived in Amman from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, where he made a surprise visit and held talks with Iraqi leaders.
The Dutch government has welcomed the first shipment of strawberries and carnations from the besieged Gaza Strip.
Dutch Representative to the Palestinian Authority, Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford, said in a statement that the successful export was ‘the best possible reward for the efforts invested by the farmers involved’.
Permission for export was arranged by Dutch officials during talks with the Israeli government, and constitute the sole export item from Gaza since 2007.
In 2007, farmers in Gaza were forced to feed carnations to livestock after export permission was denied, and in 2008 only one shipment of carnations was permitted out of Gaza ahead of Valentine’s Day.
In 2009, Dutch consular officials secured permission for regular exports of both strawberries and carnations.
In late November officials said they were hopeful that additional permission would be granted to export cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers.
l PA chief Mahmud Abbas is in Turkey to discuss the troubled ‘peace process’.
He was scheduled to meet behind closed doors with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, before talks with President Abdullah Gul.
Turkey has traditionally had close ties with the Palestinians and supports their claim to statehood.
It has also pressed for healing the rift between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and governs the besieged Gaza Strip.
Turkey’s once-close ties with Israel were wrecked on May 31 this year when Israeli commandos massacred nine Turkish citizens on board the ‘Mavi Marmara’.
The Gaza-bound aid ship was stationed in international waters when it was raided by the Israelis.
Since that attack, the struggle in the Middle East has intensified and sharpened, despite the American government’s efforts to force Palestinian leaders to make a deal with Israel.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has criticised the Palestinian Authority headed by Abbas for its willingness to accept the United States as a broker for Middle East ‘peace’.
The Palestinian faction said in a statement that the PA should go to the United Nations and demand the implementation of relevant resolutions upholding the legitimate rights of the occupied Palestinian people, rather than continue with ‘absurd’ talks.
‘Two decades of bilateral negotiations amidst various Israeli actions – settlements, operations, siege – should be enough to convince anyone that these talks are absurd and reflect Israeli and American dictates,’ the PFLP said.
The faction also said the PLO should be reformed to include all Palestinian parties.
The Islamic Jihad Palestinian resistance movement accused the PA security forces of detaining one of its members in the West Bank city of Jenin last Saturday.
The movement said PA intelligence services had issued several summons to Mansour Hafeth Melhem prior to his arrest.
Melham spent six years in Israeli jails, said Islamic Jihad, calling for his immediate release.
The movement said it held the chief of intelligence in Jenin fully responsible for Melhem’s life.
Mourners buried Islamic Jihad militant Jalal Nasser in the northern Gaza Strip’s Jabaliya refugee camp last Thursday.
Nasser was one of two militants killed by Israeli forces early last Thursday in a clash along the Gaza-Israel border fence.
Israel continues to mount raids into Gaza and bomb attacks on the besieged population.
• A division of French engineering group Veolia has pulled out of a controversial Jerusalem light railway project in favour of an Israeli operator.
Veolia Israel last month agreed to sell its five per cent stake in a consortium building and set to run the city’s light rail project to the Egged bus company.
The project is to run through annexed East Jerusalem and link Jewish settlements there with the city centre.
