Arab League fears ME peace process doomed to fail

CAIRO—The Arab-Israeli peace process is a hair’s breadth from failure following Israel’s decision to build more settlements in annexed east Jerusalem, the Arab League’s said on Tuesday.
“We are a hair’s breadth or less from announcing the failure of the peace process, given its evolution,” league secretary general Amr Mussa was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on Tuesday.
“The peace process is heading for failure because of Israel’s lack of desire for peace,” he said after Israel unveiled plans for a new settlement in annexed east Jerusalem and for hundreds of new Jewish homes in the occupied West Bank. The move triggered a chorus of world criticism and warnings it would hamper efforts to restart faltering peace talks.
Settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land sends “a strong message” that “Israel doesn’t want peace because it is building settlements to try and change the demographic and geographic situation on the ground,” Mussa said. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas “has shown the Palestinian desire to achieve peace, but we find that the Israeli response is negative,” he added. “We may take a decision on the peace process in the coming weeks because in its current state it is a dead letter.”
The Palestinians have said the settlement activity will shatter efforts to relaunch the peace process that has been largely stagnant since it was revived in late November. The United States is not satisfied with the pace at which Israel is moving to implement a long-stalled peace “road map,” U.S. and Western officials said ahead of a key meeting to assess compliance with the plan.
Officials said Washington also believed the Palestinians needed to do far more to meet their obligations to boost security and rein in militants in the West Bank, though U.S. officials have privately complained to Israel that its frequent raids were undermining those efforts.
U.S. and Western officials said Washington was particularly critical of Israel’s decision to push ahead with Jewish settlement expansion on occupied land, a move they see as damaging to U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians. Israel has also so far failed to uproot outposts built without government authorization in the occupied West Bank.
Though wary of publicly criticizing Israel, a key ally, U.S. President George W. Bush is under mounting Arab and European pressure to take a firmer stance as monitor and judge of whether the sides are meeting their commitments under the 2003 road map. It calls on Israel to remove outposts and halt settlement activity, including so-called “natural growth” of those settlements, and asks Palestinians to crack down on militants.
U.S. Gen. William Fraser, appointed by U.S. Secretary of State to help oversee road map implementation, plans to convene on Friday the first meeting of a U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian committee to assess steps taken by both sides under the plan. “They’ve got a long way to go, there’s a lot more work to do, and no one is moving as fast as the president would like them to,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Launched in November with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before Bush leaves office next January, the peace talks have been marred by disputes over settlement building and Israeli offensives in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Israel angered Washington on Sunday by announcing plans to build hundreds of new homes in the Givat Ze’ev settlement in the West Bank, officials said. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said the construction at Givat Ze’ev dated back nearly a decade and that the Jewish state’s commitment was not to expand existing settlements “beyond the original, approved master plan.”
Fayyad points to his security campaign in the West Bank city of Nablus as a sign Palestinians are meeting their commitments. Israeli officials say Palestinian forces may be improving but have a long way to go, an assessment shared by Washington.—Agencies