Clinton: U.S. Still Opposed to Israeli Settlements
By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer
Washington -
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated that the
Obama administration does not accept the legitimacy of
Israeli West Bank settlements and wants to see the
establishment of a Palestinian state with borders based on
territory that Israel has occupied since 1967.
In
remarks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit
following their November 4 talks in Cairo, Clinton said the
United States would like all current and planned Israeli
settlement activity to be halted. The U.S. policy opposing
Israeli settlement activity has not changed, she
said.
She also said Israel's offer to halt all new
settlement activities, to end the expropriation of land and
issue no permits or approvals, while "unprecedented," is
"not what we would prefer."
"We would like to see
everything ended forever," she said. However, she added that
it is "at least a positive movement."
In a November 4
interview with Jackie Northam of National Public Radio,
Clinton said the issue of settlements has been "a terrible
flashpoint" in the region. Settlements never have been a
precondition for negotiations in the past, she said, adding
that the Israeli government has gone further than its
predecessors in its offer. However, she acknowledged that
Arabs and Palestinians have said "it wasn't far
enough."
"What is so clear is that once borders are
decided, the settlement issue goes away. The Israelis build
whatever they want in their territory, the Palestinians
build whatever they want in theirs," Clinton
said.
With Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit, she said,
"Our goal is a real state with real sovereignty with the
kind of borders that will enable the people of Palestine to
make decisions about where they live and what they do on
their own," adding that "a state that is based on the
territory that has been occupied since 1967" is "the
appropriate approach."
The Obama administration has
been working to get peace negotiations restarted in hopes of
achieving a comprehensive peace and a two-state solution to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Clinton said the
troubled history between the two sides should not be allowed
to stand in the way of a more peaceful and prosperous future
for both.
"We can maintain an allegiance to the past,
but we cannot change the past. No matter what we say about
it, it is behind us," she said, urging all parties to "help
shape a future that will be vastly better for the children
of both Palestinians and Israelis."
The resumption of
talks that will discuss final status issues such as borders,
refugees and the status of Jerusalem "will allow us to bring
an end to settlement activity because we will be moving
toward the Palestinian state that I and many others have
long advocated and worked for," Clinton said.
The
United States wants to see both the establishment of a
Palestinian state and a situation in which Israelis can live
in security, and "we're not going to let anything deter us
or prevent us from working as hard as we possibly can" to
move that process forward, Clinton said.
Foreign
Minister Aboul Gheit said he and Clinton had held clear and
candid talks on the U.S. position toward Israeli
settlements, and he said that while the United States
rejects settlements, "Israel has not been responsive to the
desires of the United States."
"We feel that we need
to focus on the end of the course," Aboul Gheit said. "We
should not waste
time."
ENDS