PLO warns against Israeli extremism

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) warns against any instance of “Israeli extremism” during direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

PA resumed the negotiations on September 2, having left the process at the turn of 2009 in protest at Israeli offensives which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“We will work to seriously be engaged with these negotiations. We refuse any extremist Israeli government positions especially the continuation of settlement construction, and any disproportionate focus on security,” the PLO’s Executive Committee said in a statement on Thursday.

On Tuesday, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, said that illegal Jewish settlements control 42 percent of the occupied West Bank, AP reported.

The talks are threatened by the September 26 expiry of a self-proclaimed partial freeze that Tel Aviv imposed on its construction of the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories in November 2009.

There have already been many reports of Israel’s non-compliance with the moratorium. Jewish settlers announced plans to expand settlements only hours before the resumption of the negotiations, displaying further defiance of the Palestinian demand for the halt.

The PLO statement urged the Middle East Quartet — which is composed of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia — as well as the Arab world to “exert their utmost efforts to ensure a complete cessation of settlement construction.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has, however, said that there would be no room for any conditions for the negotiations — a point also favored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Refusing to promise any Washington intervention into the settlement issue, US State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley also said on Tuesday that “we are mindful of statements, we’re mindful of the calendar. That’s why we felt it was important to meet next week at a high level.”