Date: 17 / 02 / 2009  Time:  18:00
Nablus – Ma’an –

Palestinian leadership should stop contact with Israel until it stops expansion of illegal settlements and the separation wall in the West Bank, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said on Tuesday.

A member of the PLO Executive Committee, Committee Tayseer Khaled, said that the planned expansion of the settlement of Eftat, near Bethlehem, shows that Israel is not a partner in the peace process, calling on Palestinian leaders to take a firm stand against Israeli expansionism.

The Israeli Civil Administration approved the seizure of 1,700 additional dunams of land near the settlement, rejecting eight appeals filed by the lands Palestinian owners from the towns of Artas and Al-Khadr.

Khaled condemned the Civil Administration for its rejection of the appeals.

“This new decision to annex vast areas of lands belonging to Palestinian citizens to build 2500 new residential units in Efrat, the biggest settlement in Gush Etzion, is a gift from Olmert-Livni-Barak government to the extremist Israeli right-wing led by the Likud party. The gift came right after Israeli elections held a few days ago which showed that extremism, aggressiveness and settlement expansion have dominated Israeli society,” Khalid explained in a press release.

The statement closed by calling upon all Palestinian factions to overcome partisan disagreements and give priority to higher Palestinian interests. Khalid asked all factions to head to Cairo and complete Palestinian reconciliation which he said would help in confronting Israeli settlement expansion.

With a united government, he explained, the Palestinians could approach to the international community and the United States, asking them to pressure Israel out of respect for international law.

Acting Palestinian president deplores new illegal Israeli settlement expansion

Tuesday February 17, 2009 12:21 by Rami Almeghari - IMEMC&Agencies

Acting Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, criticized yesterday an Israeli occupation government decision to confiscate Palestinian-owned lands for illegal settlements expansion in the occupied West Bank.

"If settlement activities do not come to a halt, any peace talks with Israel become useless and meaningless", Abbas stressed.  After the results of the latest Israeli elections, Abbas called on any new Israeli leadership to accept the two-state solution as a basis for peaceful settlement with the Palestinians.

The acting Palestinian president, speaking at a conference in Ramallah with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavarov, maintained that Palestinians and Israelis can not start from scratch. According to Israeli online Daily Haaretz, Israel plans to seize 1.7 million square meters of Palestinian-owned lands in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, for the expansion of the nearby the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat.

The internationally-backed road map peace blueprint of 2003 demands that Israel stop all settlement activities on occupied Palestinian lands. Illegal Israeli settlements are illegal according international law and UN rulings. Abbas voiced his hope that an upcoming peace conference, slated for the first half of this year in Moscow, would help advance peace in the region.

On a separate issue, Abbas confirmed that a national Palestinian dialogue will start next Sunday in Cairo, stating that the Cairo-hosted dialogue would result in a Palestinian unity government to put an end to the Israeli blockade.