Abbas, Turkish president discuss latest developments, Fayyad calls for int'l peace plan

Netanyahu clings to settlements policy, maneuvers interim Palestinian state project

Last round of inter-Palestinian dialogue postponed to August

Israel defies Obama pressures

Netanyahu-Mitchell meeting postponed for second time

Turkey and Palestine further solidified their political ties Friday as President Mahmoud Abbas and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul opened the new headquarters of the Palestinian embassy in Ankara together.

“Turkey hopes someday to open its embassy to Palestine in East Jerusalem,” Gul announced after the two planted a blue spruce tree in front of the offices. The new buildings were built with assistance from the Turkish government.

Abbas called the move a “symbol of friendship and brotherhood” between Palestine and Turkey, WAFA news agency reported.

On a related news, President Mahmoud Abbas accused the Israeli government of failure to honor the previously-signed international agreements and the peace process.

During a joint press conference with his Turkish Counterpart, the President said: "The Israeli government rejects the two states solution and freezing settlement construction".

He pointed out that the Palestinian Authority abided by its commitments towards the peace process.

The pair discussed several issues related to security, economy, commerce, and the construction of Palestine's University. President Abbas Also thanked Turkey for contributing to financing the establishment of Palestine's embassy in Ankara.

"The Palestinian cause has always been one of the main causes endorsed by Turkey and the Turkish people", said President Abbas.

The opening of the new Palestinian Embassy was attended by secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s Executive Committee Yasser Abed Rabbo, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, Chief PLO Negotiator Saeb Erekat, Presidential Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rdeina, Palestinian Ambassador to Turkey Nabil Ma’roof, and several Turkish officials.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US call to halt construction on a controversial project in mostly Arab east Jerusalem. The move increases tensions with the country's staunchest ally over expansion of Jewish settlements.

The premier's statements came after a senior Israeli official confirmedthat the US state department had over the weekend summoned Michael Oren, the country's ambassador to Washington, to demand the plan be suspended.

Netanyahu, speaking at his weekly cabinet meeting, reiterated his stance that Israeli sovereignty over the entire city of Jerusalem was "indisputable" and said: "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase [homes] in all parts of Jerusalem."

He added: "I can only imagine what would happen if someone would suggest that Jews could not live in certain neighbourhoods of New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry."

His words were met with a robust response from the US, which has demanded Israel freeze all Jewish construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Palestinians want the city's eastern part, which Israel captured in the 1967 war, as the capital of their future state.

"President [Barack] Obama and Secretary [Hillary] Clinton have been clear - both publicly and privately - with the government of Israel: these types of activities must stop," the US state department said.

It added: "Our policy on Jerusalem has not changed. Jerusalem is a final status issue. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. The bottom line is we expect all the parties in the region to honour their commitments, and for the Israelis, that means a stop to activities such as this in sensitive areas, including in east Jerusalem."

Netanyahu's stance may also hamper recent efforts by George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, and Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister and the leader of the only centrist party in Mr Netanyahu's coalition, to reach a compromise on settlements.

Mitchell is expected to meet the Israeli prime minister in Jerusalem later this month.

The construction project is being funded by Irving Moskowitz, an American-Jewish businessman, who plans to tear down the now-defunct Shepherd hotel he bought in 1985 and build apartments on the site.

Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political analyst, said Netanyahu's comments were aimed at clarifying to the US and the Palestinians that he plans to make no concessions on Jerusalem. Furthermore, he added, the statements were a bid to appease the premier's ultra-nationalist and religious coalition allies, who support settlement construction and oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.

In spite of the tensions, it was announced that Robert Gates, US defence secretary, would visit Israel next weekend.

Germany, France and EU president Sweden joined Western nations pressing Israel to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank under a US-led effort to resume stalled peace talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has resisted international calls to freeze building in occupied territory, seemed to show a sign of flexibility as a newspaper reported a secret plan to remove two dozen unauthorised settler outposts.

Israel has long pledged to dismantle hilltop outposts that it never approved, but has continued building larger settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, land it captured in a 1967 war, and where Palestinians want to build a future state.

Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he would not resume peace talks with Israel, stalled since Israel elected Netanyahu, a right-wing settler champion in February, unless all settlement construction stopped.

In Berlin, Ruprecht Polenz, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, was quoted as saying Israel ran the risk “of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state” if it did not stop the construction.

Polenz, head of the German parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, further told the Rheinische Post daily that “Israel is overlooking the fact that neither Palestinians nor Arab states will agree to a solution without East Jerusalem.”

The French Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador, Daniel Shek, in Paris, to protest against a planned Israeli housing project for East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its capital and which Palestinians also seek to make their capital.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem shortly after its capture, in a move never recognised internationally.

European Union president Sweden urged from Stockholm that Israel refrain from demolishing homes in East Jerusalem where thousands are threatened with displacement.

Jerusalem has emerged as a focal point of the settlement controversy since Israeli officials accused the US State Department Sunday of telling Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, Israel should suspend plans to build about 20 housing units in the city’s eastern sector.

The United States has never confirmed it made this demand, but Netanyahu rejected it in televised remarks to his cabinet, a move analysts saw as capitalising on broad popular support in the country for Israel’s continued control of the disputed city.

Israel shut a hotel fair in East Jerusalem in the latest of several Palestinian cultural events it has disrupted in recent months saying an interim peace deal permits it to bar the Palestinian government from holding events in the city.

“They want us to leave Jerusalem, but we will not,” Rafiq al-Husseini, an aide to Abbas, said.

Neither Netanyahu’s office nor the Israeli army would comment on a report in the respected Haaretz daily that the military was preparing to “forcibly evacuate 23 illegal outposts in one day,” in a plan drawn up with Netanyahu’s knowledge.

The same Haaretz columnist disclosed plans to remove troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip before that pullout occurred in 2005.

Separately, a report by the Macro Centre of the Israeli European Policy Network said settlements were receiving a larger share of government funding than municipalities inside Israel, and the settler population was also growing three times as fast.

“While Israeli municipalities as a whole receive 34.7 per cent of their income from (the government) and obtain another 64.3 per cent from their own income, settlement municipalities obtain 57 per cent from the (government) and only 42.8 per cent from their own income,” the report said.

A senior Palestinian official announced on Sunday that rivals Fatah and Islamic Hamas movements decided to postpone the inter-reconciliation dialogue until August25.

Azzam el-Ahmed, chief negotiator of Fatah movement, told Xinhua that the dialogue between the two groups had failed to reach a deal that ends the current rift between them.

These statements were made at the end of a second session of talks held in Cairo on Saturday between leaders from both rival groups. El-Ahmed said their dialogue "was stuck with obstacles and we didn't reach results."

"The two sides agreed with the Egyptian mediators to postpone the dialogue until August 25," el-Ahmed said, adding that "the postponement was agreed with the Egyptians."

Meanwhile, well-informed Palestinian sources said that the reason behind postponing the dialogue "was due to the large gaps in the positions of the two sides, mainly the issue of the mutual political arrests in Gaza and West Bank."

The sources said that all the Palestinian factions "will join the upcoming session of the dialogue agreed to be held on August 25 in the frame of a comprehensive national dialogue."

Leading rabbis in Israel released a petition demanding President Obama cease pressuring the Jewish state on the issue of Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem is off limits, and we respectfully request that you stop all talk and pressure against Jewish construction in Jerusalem," reads a petition signed by 250 members of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace.

The Congress is a coalition of Israeli rabbinic leaders, including pulpit rabbis and some of the most prestigious names in the Torah community.

"During these days when our nation mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and remembers in abhorrence those that destroyed it, we are sure that you, Mr. President, do not want to enter the list of those who raised a hand on Jerusalem and its Jewish inhabitants," the rabbis write.

The rabbis state that besides the sanctity of Jerusalem, it is "totally illogical" to "even think" about negotiating with the Palestinians, pointing out "every piece of territory" taken over by the Palestinian Authority was turned into a sanctuary for terrorism and a launching for attacks against Jews.

A meeting between Netanyahu and U.S. President Obama's special Middle East peace envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, has been postponed.

The meeting was scheduled to take place Thursday in Paris and was one of the highlights of the conservative prime minister's first European visit since being elected.

But Israeli officials accompanying Netanyahu during Tuesday's stop in Rome said that Defense Minister Ehud Barak will instead travel to Washington next week to hold talks with Mitchell.

In a statement read out to reporters, the prime minister's office said the Netanyahu-Mitchell meeting was being postponed until after the talks with Barak in order to "clarify issues."