Ambassador Shalev to 'Post' on UNSC hearing: The important thing is "what happens on the ground."
By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORKgabriela shalev 224.88(photo credit: Courtesy)
Bilateral negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders are the only way to achieve peace, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations said, after a contentious round of public debates over the impact of settlements on the peace process.
"I think it was a show," Ambassador Gabriela Shalev told The Jerusalem Post Friday after a two-hour Security Council hearing, in which Saudi Arabia, the Arab League and the Palestinian president demanded an immediate end to settlements.
The Security Council is not expected to take an immediate vote on the matter or to issue any statement regarding Israel's continued settlement construction.
"The important thing is not more discussions in the UN and the Security Council of the kind that we were dragged into, but what happens on the ground," Shalev said.
Separately, the Quartet - the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia - issued a statement calling on Israel to dismantle all outposts constructed after March 2001 and to freeze any further construction in the settlements, even to accommodate "natural growth," due to its "damaging impact on the negotiating environment."
The Quartet additionally suggested holding an international summit with the Israelis and Palestinians in Moscow in the spring of 2009 - several months past the hoped-for December deadline for a deal, and after a new US administration is in place.
US President George Bush has said he continues to hope for an agreement by the end of his term, although President Shimon Peres said explicitly in his comments to the UN General Assembly and to the press earlier this week that he believes an agreement won't be struck until next year.
Friday's developments come during a period of transition in the region, as Israel awaits its new government and with the Palestinians seriously divided.
Shalev acknowledged the fragility of the situation, but said it only increases the importance of direct talks with the Palestinians rather than the intervention of interlocutors at the UN.
"We respect the UN but this is not the thing that will encourage both parties to continue a path towards comprehensive peace," she told the Post.
"We know the process is painful on both sides, too slow," she added.
She noted that despite tough language in the Security Council chamber, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shook her hand "warmly" on his way in and out. Abbas also met earlier in the day with Peres.
Abbas, in his remarks to the Security Council, committed himself to continuing with talks that began last year at Annapolis, proclaiming: "I will never cease to negotiate."
Yet he minced no words before the Security Council, describing his people as "under siege" because of the existing settlement policy.
"How can we arrive at peace, Mr. President?" he asked.
Statistics released by Peace Now in August showed a 550 percent increase in the number of housing tenders published for West Bank settlements in the first eight months of 2008, when construction contracts were sought for 417 units, compared with 65 in 2007.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in the first six months of 2008 there was a 42 percent increase in the number of new homes under construction in the West Bank, from 700 in 2007 to 1,010 in 2008.
Speaking at the Security Council, Saudi Prince Saud Al-Faisal said the settlement problem is the "one issue that threatens to being down the whole peace process."
Amr Moussa, speaking for the Arab League, noted Friday that "there are only three months left in the year 2008 and there is no evidence that the establishment of the promised Palestinian state is anywhere near."
He blamed the absence of any written proposals as well as the situation with the settlements.
Shalev, in her prepared remarks, took a professorial tone, questioning the entire concept of the meeting by imagining a stranger listening to the discussion who might "be under the impression that settlements are the only issue."
She rattled off things the stranger would be missing: weapons smuggling to Hamas and Hizbullah, the phenomenon of terror attacks like last week's car attack on soldiers in Jerusalem and the aggressive speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told the General Assembly that Israel was "on a definite slope to collapse."
"While settlements remain a delicate issue, they are not the principal one," she said.
"We in Israel are committed to a two-state solution," Shalev said. "We continue to negotiate with the Palestinian president. Israel is prepared, if the conditions arrive, to make painful concessions."
Dani Dayan, who heads the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza said he thought it was "outrageous" that the UN Security Council debated the matter of settlements and not Palestinian-sponsored terrorism.
"Settlements are not an obstacle to peace. They are a guarantee of Israel's security," said Dayan.
But he added that he was most upset by Shalev's comments that Israel was ready to made deep concessions with respect to the settlements.
The settlements that Israel evacuated in Gaza in 2005 have been converted by Palestinians into launching pads for sending rockets into Israel, said Dayan. The same will happen in Judea and Samaria, he warned.
Once Israel changes its attitude toward the settlements, than the international community will follow suit, Dayan said.
The settlement issue was raised in the Security Council on the sidelines of this week's opening of the annual General Assembly at the request of the Arab League.
For months, the United States had successfully kept Palestinian issues out of the Security Council to allow the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians to work.
Before the meeting, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that the United States and some other nations had objected to Friday's open debate, but that Washington had bowed to the inevitable and let the meeting take place.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took the occasion to denounce Ahmadinejad, who, she said, had told the General Assembly just this week that "another member of this body should be wiped from the map, should not exist."
"That should not be allowed," Rice said, and added that if the council feels it needs to meet again on threats to peace in the Middle East, it ought to focus on the Iranian president's remarks.
Tovah Lazaroff and AP contributed to this report.
