Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will defend expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank when he meets US President Barack Obama and the Palestinian leader, his spokesman said.
"You have never heard the prime minister say he would freeze settlement building. The opposite is true," Nir Hefetz said yesterday when asked about today's three-way summit during the UN General Assembly in New York, where differences over settlement building have limited expectations of a result.
"There are some politicians ... who see halting building or ceding national territory or harming the settlements [in the West Bank] as an asset, something that can help Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot be counted among those people."
About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and in Arab East Jerusalem,captured in a 1967 war, alongside three million Palestinians. The World Court calls the settlements illegal.
The US-backed peace plan that Israel signed in 2003, known as the "road map",required a halt to building in the Jewish settlements that Palestinians say are diminishing the chance of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Mr Netanyahu, despite pressure from the Obama administration, insists settlers should be allowed to continue building as their families grow and rules out any discussion on sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Mr Obama's personal intervention was welcome. A settlement freeze was an Israeli obligation, he said, not a Palestinian precondition.
"For the last eight months, the clear message from the international community has been that both sides need to meet their obligations" in order for talks to resume, Mr Erekat said.
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