A key Palestinian official demanded Tuesday that President Barack Obama follow up his tough talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and force Israel to stop West Bank settlement construction and accept creation of a Palestinian state.
Without action to reinforce Obama's words, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned the whole region could deteriorate into extremism and instability. That message was echoed by Netanyahu's political rivals in Israel, who stressed that peace was impossible without establishing a Palestinian state.
Tensions escalated late Tuesday when Israeli planes carried out at least seven airstrikes in Gaza, Palestinian security officials said. A hospital official said one person was wounded in the most intensive air operation in weeks.
The officials said Israeli planes carried out four bombing runs on the Gaza-Egypt border, targeting smuggling tunnels that Israel says militants use to bring weapons, rockets and ammunition into the seaside territory. Later, the planes hit a metal workshop and a police post in Gaza City and a workshop in central Gaza, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
The airstrikes came several hours after militants in Gaza fired a rocket at a house in the Israeli town of Sderot, causing extensive damage but no causalities, said police. The violence was a concrete reminder of the instability in the region and the importance of the meeting between the U.S. and Israeli leaders.
Israeli government officials downplayed the differences between Obama and Netanyahu, but the two disagreed publicly about the key issues in Mideast diplomacy - how to deal with Iran, how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the relationship between the two.
Though the two professed friendship, the substance added up to the harshest public confrontation between an Israeli and American leader in nearly a decade, prompting Israeli commentators to warn of storm clouds on the horizon for the important relationship between the two countries.
Despite U.S. pressure, Netanyahu avoided committing to the idea of creating a Palestinian state and instead said the key to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to halt Iran's nuclear program - a sequencing disputed by Obama.
The U.S. president said progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace would undercut extremists and help control Iran. He also said Israel must live up to its commitment under the internationally backed "road map" peace plan to freeze West Bank settlement construction.
Erekat, who has been involved in various negotiation with Israel since 1991, welcomed Obama's remarks but said he must force Israel to act to "turn a new page for this region."
Failing to follow through "would mean closing the peace chapter and pushing the region into the hands of extremists," Erekat said.
Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, called the disagreements between Obama and Netanyahu "legitimate differences" and said he did not expect a crisis in relations with the U.S., Israel's closest and most important ally.
"From Israel's point of view, we are ready without any further delay to open up a dialogue - extensive and serious one with the Palestinians," Ayalon told The Associated Press. He said there should be no preconditions, and that Israel is ready to discuss economic, security and political issues.
But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he won't restart discussions until the Israeli government commits to the creation of a Palestinian state and freezes West Bank settlement construction. Abbas is due at the White House next week for his first meeting with Obama.
Netanyahu's opponents called the meeting a failure. "Anyone who thinks peace can be achieved without a Palestinian state at the end of the road is simply mistaken and misleading the public," Meir Sheetrit, a leader in the opposition Kadima Party, told Israel Radio.
Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said Netanyahu's refusal to endorse Palestinian independence did not mean that he won't do so in the future.
"What's more important than the terminology is the essence and the substance and, of course, the reality on the ground," he said. "We are not ruling out any outcome."
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum dismissed Obama's tough statements to Netanyahu as misleading because the U.S. remains Israel's main ally. Hamas is listed as a terror organization by the U.S., Israel and the EU, reported AP.
...