Israel to halt settlement construction, free prisoners
Middle East Desk Report

JERUSALEM—Israel said on Monday it would freeze construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank and planned to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners ahead of a key US peace meeting.
The moves were unveiled shortly before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met in a last-ditch bid to resolve differences on a joint document being drawn up for the peace conference.
Ahead of the encounter, the Israeli cabinet approved the release of nearly 450 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture to Abbas, a senior official told AFP. Palestinians had requested that Israel free some 2,000 of the 11,000 Palestinian detainees that it is holding.
Olmert also vowed Israel would abide by commitments on settlement activity that it undertook — but has not honoured — under the so-called Middle East roadmap peace plan, largely dormant since its 2003 launch. “We have committed ourselves under the roadmap not to build new settlements in the West Bank and we will not build any,” a senior official quoted Olmert as telling ministers.
“We have committed not to expropriate land and we will not expropriate any. We have committed ourselves to dismantling illegal outposts and we will remove them.” But Olmert’s statements appeared to fall short of a complete freeze to settlements — including the expansion of existing ones — which the Palestinians have demanded ahead of the peace meeting expected to take place next week in the US town of Annapolis.
“Israel should also engage to cease the natural growth of the settlements,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said. Speaking to reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas said that “we want to reach satisfactory progress so that we can go to Annapolis with a solid base.”
He said he had not yet received an official invitation for the conference, which Washington had announced in July but for which no official date and participant list has yet been announced. Amid a diplomatic push before Annapolis, Olmert was to travel to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak, a senior Israeli official told reporters.
Washington called the meeting with the aim of jumpstarting peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians after a seven-year freeze, but expectations about its outcome have sunk amid the stalemate between the two sides. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have held intensive talks in a bid to hammer out a joint declaration outlining a solution to their decades-long conflict which they hope to present at the US talks.
But while they have agreed that the document will address the core issues — borders, the fate of refugees and the status of the contested city of Jerusalem — they remain at odds over how detailed any declaration should be. The statement is to form the basis for final-status peace negotiations expected to kick off after the US meeting.
“The main discords right now between us are the timetable following Annapolis for finalising the negotiations and implementing the agreement,” a senior Israeli official told on condition of anonymity.
The Palestinians want a three-way committee, made up of Israelis, Palestinians and Americans, to oversee the implemention of agreements, while Israelis want simply a US official to supervise the process, he said. And there is disagreement over the sequence in which agreements will be implemented.
The deadlock has raised the possibility that Annapolis will end without a joint declaration, an unnamed senior Israeli official told the Haaretz daily. “A situation is certainly possible by which there will be no joint declaration and we will have to make do with two separate statements that will be combined in the speeches of the two leaders,” the official said.
At Monday’s cabinet meeting, Olmert warned against “excessive expectations” and admitted that “there are disagreements” although he said the two sides “should reach agreement on some of the issues” before Annapolis.