U.S. Vice President Joe Biden reveiws a guard of honour alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas prior to their meeting on March 10, 2010 in Ramallah, West Bank. Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

U.S. Vice-President’s efforts to restart peace talks complicated by approval of new homes in East Jerusalem

By PAUL KORING

Source: The Globe and Mail

March 10, 2010

Joe Biden’s first trip to Israel as U.S. Vice-President – a visit designed to soothe irritated Israeli-American relations – began with a little sabre-rattling aimed at Tehran.

Iran’s ruling mullahs will be denied nuclear weapons, Mr. Biden declared, in a message certain to cheer his Israeli hosts. He made no mention of Israel’s own never-acknowledged nuclear arsenal.

“We’re determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Mr. Biden said soon after arriving in Jerusalem yesterday. The U.S. has had the same long-standing policy toward both North Korea and Iran. However, the North Korean regime has ignored Washington’s threats and tested a nuclear weapon four years ago.

Mr. Biden’s five-day trip is aimed at mending frayed relations with Israel and trying to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security,” Mr. Biden said.

Many Arabs see U.S. attitudes toward Israel as emblematic of a double standard. The Jewish state is known to have nuclear weapons, yet successive U.S. presidents have never called for Israeli disarmament or compliance with international arms treaties.

Hours before Mr. Biden’s arrival – the Vice-President is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Israel since Barack Obama became president 14 months ago – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a particularly apocalyptic assessment of militant Islam going nuclear.

“The greatest threat facing mankind is the spectre of a militant Islamic regime acquiring nuclear weapons, or the spectre of nuclear weapons acquiring a militant Islamic regime. The first is dangerously close to happening in Iran, and the second may or may not happen in Pakistan,” he said.

The Obama administration is trying to round up international support for a new and tougher set of sanctions against Iran, but continued opposition from China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, makes that unlikely. “Dialogue and negotiations are still the best choice, and cannot be lightly abandoned,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday.

Taking a firm stand with Iran is necessary if Washington is to get Israel to return to peace talks with the Palestinians, yet too much sabre-rattling aimed at Tehran risks any chance of winning Beijing’s backing for sanctions.

Today, Mr. Biden will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who warned on the weekend that the peace process has “almost reached a dead end.”

The two sides haven’t met for 15 months and Mr. Biden’s symbolic effort will see nothing more than so-called proximity talks, in which U.S. diplomats shuttle between the Palestinian delegation in Ramallah and Israeli officials in Jerusalem.

“The Israeli government continues to procrastinate to gain time and strengthen its control of the occupied territories to prevent any realistic possibility of establishing an independent, viable … state of Palestine,” Mr. Abbas said.

Israel has defied Mr. Obama’s demand – the toughest ever by a U.S. president – for a complete halt to new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories seized by Israel 43 years ago.

And soon after Mr. Biden’s arrival, Israel approved the building of 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, whose population is mostly Palestinian and which Palestinians envision as the capital of a future state.

In a statement, Mr. Biden criticized the move, saying the “substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

The latest Israeli building announcement in East Jerusalem shows that “American efforts have failed before the indirect negotiations have even begun,” said Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the U.S. “condemns the decision today by the government of Israel on advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem.”