RAMALLAH – The Palestinians said on Thursday the United States must put pressure on Israel to revoke a settlement expansion decision before indirect peace talks can get underway. Israel's announcement this week, during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, of plans to build 1,600 settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank it annexed to Jerusalem, cast a shadow over US efforts to relaunch Middle East peacemaking. The decision embarrassed Biden, who said it undermined peace efforts, and infuriated the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership, which had agreed to a US proposal for indirect talks under pressure from Washington and its Arab allies. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa on Wednesday he had decided not to enter the talks for now. The Arab League had endorsed a four-month framework for the US-mediated negotiations. "The Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances," Moussa said in Cairo. An aide to Abbas said the Palestinians wanted US pressure on Israel to reverse the settlement expansion decision, which Israeli officials said was badly timed, but would not be canceled. "What is required is that when (US envoy George) Mitchell comes back is that he is supposed to succeed in revoking the Israeli settlement decisions in East Jerusalem in order to give an opportunity to launch the indirect talks," said the aide, Nabil Abu Rdainah. Mitchell, who has been trying to broker for a year a resumption of talks on Palestinian statehood, was expected to return to Israel and the West Bank next week. Abbas had demanded a full halt to settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in a 1967 war, before any resumption of the two-decade old peace process. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital, a claim that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
