Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sunday Israel would offer no further gestures to the Palestinians as attempts to reboot the stalled peace process.
"We finished our arsenal of gestures and there will be no other gestures. Now it is the time for Palestinian gestures," local daily The
Jerusalem Post quoted Lieberman as saying at a joint press conference in Jerusalem together with visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
His comments are just shortly ahead of a reported visit to the region by George Mitchell, the United States special envoy on Middle East
affairs.
Israeli media reported that Mitchell is expected to visit the Middle East this week as a fresh attempt of U.S. President Barack Obama's
administration to re-launch the Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Mitchell might still face a stalemate in the region with both Israelis and Palestinians refusing to make further compromise.
Even more, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday criticized the United States of softening its position regarding the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations "as soon as possible and without preconditions" earlier this month.
When he took office in January 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama "demanded the full suspension of the Israeli settlement, but now
there is a fallback in the U.S. stance in facing the Israeli government's rejection" to freeze the settlement construction, Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.
Israeli Netanyahu government officially decreed in late November a 10-month moratorium on new construction projects in West Bank settlements, in a move hailed by Washington as a great step forward.
However, the Palestinian leadership rejected the offer, and accused its neighbor of not being genuine, as the moratorium excludes some 3,000 settlement housing units already approved beforehand as well as construction activities in East Jerusalem.
The PNA has repeatedly stressed that it will not return to the negotiating table until Israel completely freezes settlements construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both of which the Palestinians claim are part of their future statehood.