Embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Her Majesty Queen Rania on Sunday visited Dar Al Aman, the child safety centre affiliated with the Jordan River Foundation (JRF), to follow up on the facility’s progress and its work to protect young victims of abuse and neglect.During yesterday’s visit, Her Majesty was briefed on new methods of treatment provided by caregivers and psychological specialists, as well as on the challenges facing volunteers working with children at the centre.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the centre has offered counselling and rehabilitation services to hundreds of children.

Dar Al Aman, the first child safety centre in the Arab world, provides shelter and care for sexually, physically and emotionally abused children who are treated and evaluated before being integrated into their rehabilitated families.

To date, 280 children have benefited from programmes provided at the centre that include psychological, social, educational and medical services.

The centre currently accommodates 30 children in a home-like atmosphere with caregivers providing them with love, attention and support.

Queen Rania, who has chaired the JRF board of trustees since 1995, pioneered the first Arab initiative of its kind by establishing the Child Safety Programme in 1997. The programme’s objectives include enhancing positive child-rearing practices to protect children, as well as ways to identify, confront and eliminate different kinds of abuse through awareness, training, prevention and intervention.

Also yesterday, the Queen met with caregivers and counsellors who updated her on the different activities provided at the centre and spoke about their experiences working with the children.

Her Majesty stressed the importance of providing an environment that is supportive for children, caregivers and specialists working with young victims of abuse.

Queen Rania also toured the centre’s library and playroom, accompanied by JRF Director General Valentina Qseisieh, Dar Al Aman’s new director, Lubna Qadoumi, Samia Bishara from the Queen Rania Family and Child Centre, and JRF board members, including Saed Karaja and Minister of Social Development Hala Lattouf.

In the centre’s play room, caregivers discussed the “Picture of Hope” project which uses photography as a means to enhance the children’s therapeutic process.

At the end of the tour, Queen Rania checked on the centre’s apartments and stopped by to chat with a group of children who were playing with LEGOs.

Reiterating the importance of graduating more specialists in the field of child protection, Her Majesty thanked the centre’s staff for their efforts in educating, guiding and caring for the children.

A US PEACE envoy’s suggestion that Washington could penalise Israel financially to force it to make concessions to the Palestinians drew Israeli ire on Sunday, Reuters reported.

“Under American law, the United States can withhold support on loan guarantees to Israel,” George Mitchell said on US television on Wednesday after being asked about the kind of pressure that could be brought to bear on Israel.

Over the past two decades, Israel has received US guarantees covering billions of dollars in loans, underwriting that has enabled it to raise money overseas more cheaply.

Although such guarantees have slipped in importance and Mitchell made clear in the US public television interview that no sanctions against Israel were being considered, his remarks added more discord to Israeli relations with President Barack Obama’s White House.

In a statement late on Saturday “in reaction to media inquiries after Mitchell’s interview”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office blamed the Palestinians for a peacemaking impasse which the envoy, due back in the region later this month, has been unable to break.

“Everyone knows that the Palestinian Authority refuses to renew peace talks, while Israel took significant steps to restart the process,” the statement said.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, visiting US Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain rejected Mitchell’s remarks.

“Any attempt to pressure Israel, to force Israel, to the negotiating table by denying Israel support will not pass the Congress of the United States,” said Lieberman, an independent.

Republican Senator McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, added: “We disagree, obviously, with that comment and I am sure that you will see the administration in the future say that is certainly not the administration’s policy.”

‘Bombshell’

Israeli media seized on Mitchell’s remarks as reminders of a low point in US-Israeli relations - President George Bush’s withholding of $10 billion in guarantees in 1991 after Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refused to freeze settlement expansion.

“Mitchell’s threat,” said the main headline of Israel’s mass circulation Maariv newspaper, which described the envoy’s comments as a “bombshell”.

Obama and Netanyahu have clashed over the president’s demand - since softened - that Israel halt all settlement activity on land occupied in the 1967 war, in line with a 2003 US-backed peace “roadmap” that also called on the Palestinians to rein in fighters.

Nabil Abu Rdaineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, rejected the accusation that the Palestinians were to blame for a lack of progress towards a statehood deal.

“Israel continues settlement building in violation of the roadmap,” Abu Rdaineh said.

Under pressure from Obama, Netanyahu imposed a limited, 10-month moratorium on November 25 on housing starts in West Bank settlements, saying he hoped this would help restart negotiations suspended for the past year.

But he excluded East Jerusalem and nearby annexed areas of the West Bank, and Abbas has not budged from his demand for a complete settlement freeze before talks can resume.

Asked about Mitchell’s remarks, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz called US loan guarantees a “token of friendship” but said Israel had no plans to use those available for 2010 and 2011.

In 2002, the United States provided a package of $9 billion in loan guarantees. The package included a formula that deducts a dollar of guarantees for every dollar Israel spent on settlement building.

As of December 15, Israel still had $3.148 billion of the guarantees available after issuing $4.1 billion in bonds backed by the United States and a $1.1 billion deduction for settlement building and concerns over the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank.

West Bank demolition

Israeli forces on Sunday knocked down shelters that were home to about 150 Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials told Reuters.

A spokesman for the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since a 1967 war, said 14 “illegally constructed structures were removed”. They had been built on a military training ground, “endangering the lives of those present”, Lee Hiromoto, the spokesman, said.

Atef Hanini, a local Palestinian official, disputed the Israeli justification and said the Palestinian farming community had lived in the area of Tana, east of Nablus, for decades.

A mechanical digger ploughed through what remained of one of the shelters and a Palestinian woman remonstrated with Israeli soldiers at the scene. The structures included homes, stables and a school.

Hanini said the residents had defied Israeli instructions to demolish the structures themselves. Hiromoto said numerous warnings and evacuation orders had been issued.

Under interim peace agreements with the Palestinians, Israel exercises full military and civil control over some 60 per cent of the West Bank, a zone known as “Area C”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a December report that Israel’s restrictive planning regime in Area C meant tens of thousands of Palestinians were left with no choice other than to build without authorisation, risking the demolition of their homes.

The UN body said it recorded the demolition of 180 Palestinian-owned Area C structures in 2009. The demolitions displaced 319 Palestinians, including 167 children.

The Palestinians want the West Bank and Gaza Strip to form an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Gaza air strike

Israeli warplanes killed three Islamic Jihad gunmen on Sunday after Netanyahu warned the military would use maximum force to counter attacks by Palestinian fighters in Gaza, Agence France-Presse reported.

The aircraft targeted a group of fighters in the central Gaza Strip, killing the three with air-to-ground missiles, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli military said they targeted the group “as they were preparing to fire rockets into Israel”. Earlier on Sunday, Netanyahu warned that Israel would react harshly after a recent upsurge in rocket and mortar attacks from the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave.

“Our government’s policy is clear,” he said before the weekly Cabinet meeting. “We will respond to any firing into our territory strongly and immediately.” Fighters fired four mortar rounds at southern Israel on Sunday, without causing casualties.

Later in the day the air raid struck east of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza. Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency services, said the bodies of three men were later taken to a hospital in the town.

The dead were all members of the Islamic Jihad group, he said.

It was the latest violence along Gaza’s border, which has been mostly quiet since a war Israel launched on the Islamist Hamas in Gaza on December 27, 2008, in response to rocket fire ended with mutual ceasefires on January 18, 2009.

The ceasefires have largely held, despite violations by both sides, and Hamas has largely succeeded in restraining Islamic Jihad, a smaller rival Islamist group.

إعلان
إلى الأخوات والإخوة الأفاضل أبناء الجالية  الأردنية في استراليا ونيوزلاند
تهدي سفارة المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية في استراليا ونيوزلاندا بأطيب التحيات وأرقها لكم جميعاً ويسرنا أن نعلن للجميع بأن السفارة واعتباراً من مطلع هذا العام قد وضعت الهاتف رقم:
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لتلقي الإتصالات الطارئة والضرورية بعد ساعات العمل الرسمي وفي عطل نهاية الاسبوع أو خلال العطل الرسمية أو الوطنية أو الأعياد الدينية، وذلك بهدف استمرار وتوثيق التواصل معكم.
كما تغتنم السفارة هذه المناسبة لتهيب بجميع أبناء الجالية الكرام بالمبادرة لتسجيل أسمائهم وعناوينهم وارقام هواتفهم وبريدهم الألكتروني لدى السفارة على العنوان التالي:
jordan@jordanembassy.org.au
 وذلك تمتينا ًلآواصر التواصل معكم في جميع المناسبات والظروف.
إن سفارة المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية إذ تجدد تحياتها لجميع ابناء الجالية الأردنية في أستراليا ونيوزلندا لتتمنى للجميع التوفيق والنجاح
  في ظل قائدنا ورائد مسيرتنا جلالة الملك عبد الله الثاني ابن الحسين المعظم حفظه الله ورعاه وأعزّ ملكه.
                                                                                      
8/1/2010

Israel approved Sunday listing some Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as zones that entitle the communities to millions of dollars of extra state funding.The Cabinet decision was seen as a gesture towards settlers furious about a 10-month moratorium on new building permits in settlements after months of US pressure.

But it infuriated the Palestinians and was likely to draw fire from the international community, which considers all Israeli settlements illegal.

The Cabinet voted to include some settlements in the list of communities designated as “national priority zones”, giving them access to credits worth $41 million, a government official told AFP.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat slammed the move, saying in a statement that it “reveals the extent to which Israel’s settlement ‘moratorium’ is a sham”.

“Rather than make peace its number one priority, Israel continues to prioritise settlements and the relentless colonisation of occupied Palestinian land, rendering the two-state solution politically and economically unviable.”

The Cabinet had been expected to approve the proposal during its morning session, but put off the vote amid disagreements over which communities inside Israel should be included on the list.

In its vote, the Cabinet also decided to create a commission that will decide within 30 days on whether to include other communities inside Israel, the official said.

The new credits will benefit 110,000 settlers and can be used for vocational training programmes and other educational or cultural activities.

The main settler organisation, Yesha, welcomed the move, but said more steps were needed.

“It is a step in the right direction, but the route remains long,” said spokesman Yishai Hollender.

The communities affected on Sunday are mainly outside the large settlement blocs Israel wants to annex under any peace accord with the Palestinians.

Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party said the move was aimed at expressing support for settlements amid the moratorium.

“With this, we want to send a message [to the settlers] that we understand their difficulties and want to support them,” Steinitz told public radio.

The European Union has expressed concern about the plan and said it would consult its partners in the Middle East Quartet over the move.

“Coordination with the Quartet I think is called for in view of the serious nature of such a move,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said on Friday.

“If I understand it rightly, it is a rather serious step,” he said. “If that is the decision that will be taken by the Israeli government, we will most certainly express our views on it.”

The issue of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land is one of the thorniest in the stalled Middle East peace talks.

Violence

A Palestinian man wounded an Israeli woman in a knife attack in the occupied West Bank late Saturday and fled the scene, the Israeli army announced.

The woman, a local resident, “was stabbed at an intersection at Gush Etzion near Bethlehem”, in the southern West Bank, and rushed to a hospital in Jerusalem, an army spokesman said.

Meanwhile, fighters in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fired a rocket and a mortar round at Israel on Sunday, but the projectiles landed in the sea and an open field without causing casualties, the Israeli military said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

 Jordan on Saturday reiterated its support for the Palestinian Authority (PA), represented by President Mahmoud Abbas.At a meeting with Abbas, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who conveyed a message from His Majesty King Abdullah to the Palestinian leader, expressed the Kingdom’s commitment to continued coordination with the authority to end the current “impasse” in peace efforts and relaunch serious and effective peace negotiations that lead to the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state on the national soil with East Jerusalem as its capital.

During a joint press conference with his Palestinian counterpart Riyad Malki, Judeh underlined that establishing an independent Palestinian state is in the interest of Jordan, stressing Jordan’s full support for the PA’s efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue.

He said the Israeli government is not exerting enough effort to resume peace negotiations.

The minister reaffirmed Jordan’s rejection of Israel’s unilateral measures, particularly the continuation of settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as its attempts to violate the sanctity of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, which he said hinder the resumption of negotiations.

He underscored that the US and international community should continue to play a significant role in peacemaking, highlighting the “unprecedented” international consensus regarding the two-state formula and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.

Stressing the centrality of the Palestinian cause, Judeh highlighted that the two-state solution is in fact a “57-state solution”, referring to the Arab Peace Initiative, which was agreed upon in the 2002 Beirut summit and offers Israel peace and normal ties with 57 Arab and Muslim countries in exchange for withdrawal from all occupied lands.

Malki said discussions covered the latest political developments regarding peace negotiations, especially the current “crisis” created by Israel’s refusal to abide by the 2002 roadmap and halt settlement expansion, including the so-called “natural growth” of settlements.

He underlined the importance of the upcoming EU ministerial meeting, slated to be held in Brussels on Monday to discuss the Swedish proposal regarding the two-state solution.

His Majesty King Abdullah on Tuesday instructed the government to amend the Elections Law in preparation for the upcoming parliamentary elections.In a letter to Prime Minister Nader Dahabi, the King stressed that these elections “should be a model of transparency, fairness and integrity, and a promising step in our process of reform and modernisation, the aims of which are to achieve the best for our nation and to expand the horizon of progress and prosperity for Jordanians”.

“In order to achieve this objective, we hereby give you the responsibility of taking the necessary steps, foremost of which is amending the Elections Law,” the King said.

He also directed the government to develop the electoral process “in such a manner that the next legislative elections will be qualitatively improved and all Jordanians will practise their right to campaign and to elect their representatives in Parliament”.

The government is authorised to enact temporary laws under Article 94 of the Constitution, which stipulates: “In cases where the National Assembly is not sitting or is dissolved, the Council of Ministers has, with the approval of the King, the power to issue provisional laws covering matters which require necessary measures which admit of no delay or which necessitate expenditures incapable of postponement. Such provisional laws, which shall not be contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, shall have the force of law, provided that they are placed before the Assembly at the beginning of its next session.”

Opposition leaders across the spectrum hailed the decision and called for new, fair and free elections on the basis of a revised elections law (see story on page 3).

Linked to decentralisation

Analysts, intellectuals and former lawmakers agreed that the Elections Law is likely to be amended in connection with the decentralisation law, which they expect to be endorsed as a temporary law during Parliament’s suspension.

Former Deputy Mamdouh Abbadi said: “I believe the government will endorse the decentralisation legislation as a temporary law, and to conduct elections for the governorates’ councils before amending the Elections Law.”

However, Abbadi said such a process cannot be completed within the four-month time frame for electing a new Parliament as stipulated in the Constitution, implying that the dissolution of Parliament may be extended as sanctioned under Article 73, Paragraph 4 of the Constitution, which allows such an extension under extraordinary circumstances.

Political analyst Abdullah Abu Rumman agreed with Abbadi that the government is likely to endorse the decentralisation bill before the new election, noting that the proposed law entails a major change in the role of deputies.

Under the decentralisation law, governorates will be represented by councils, which Abu Rumman said will allow parliamentarians to focus on their national legislative and monitoring roles rather than securing services for their constituents. He said the government should make “qualitative improvements” to the Elections Law in order to ensure that deputies remain focused on their constitutional roles.

Al Ghad newspaper columnist Samih Maaitah also noted a link between the decentralisation plan and possible amendments to the Elections Law.

“No one can guess now what the expected modifications to the Elections Law are. But the upcoming law might be connected to the decentralisation plan,” Maaitah told The Jordan Times on Tuesday.

“If this was the scenario, the number of House representatives should be decreased, as the governorates will be represented in the governorates’ councils according to the proposed decentralisation law,” he added.

However, Maaitah said a strong political reform programme requires a strong government that can prepare for better elections, and expressed doubt that the current government is “strong enough to do so”.

“We have experienced the work of this government over the past two years, and there has been weakness in its performance. It has had internal and economic problems,” he said, adding that a Cabinet reshuffle alone will not solve the problem.

Saad Hayel Srour, a member of the recently dissolved Lower House, said: “The current law makes deputies hostages to demands for services from their constituents, and people have started to judge them based on what they provide for them and not on their legislative and monitoring performance.”

Changes to Elections Law

Srour told The Jordan Times yesterday that the Elections Law is one of several factors negatively impacting the quality of the Parliament, adding that redistributing seats among the electoral districts might help improve the chamber’s performance.

Meanwhile, other analysts and deputies called for cancelling the one-person, one-vote system.

In August 1993, Parliament passed an amendment to the Elections Law that adjusted Jordan’s electoral system to the principle of “one-person, one-vote”. The law ended the previous voting system, under which voters were entitled to as many votes as the number of parliamentary seats allocated for their district.

Former deputy Azzam Hneidi, a member of the Islamic Action Front, called for a “democratic and modern” law, suggesting that the current formula be replaced with a voting list system, under which citizens would vote for slates of candidates rather than individuals.

“If we want to have better legislative and monitoring performance in future Parliaments, the proposed elections law should end the one-vote system and the elections should be transparent, without the vote rigging that happened in some of the previous elections,” Hneidi told The Jordan Times.

Political analyst Oraib Rentawi warned that if the elections are conducted under the current system, the faces in Parliament may change but the performance will not.

Rentawi also called for establishing a higher commission to monitor the elections.

“Monitoring the elections should not be under the authority of the Ministry of Interior. There should be a high commission that monitors elections to avoid any attempt at fraud,” Rentawi explained.

Abu Rumman said, however, that election monitoring commissions are only formed in countries that are experiencing civil conflict, asserting that there is no need for such a measure in Jordan and calling the allegations of vote rigging in the last election “baseless”.

A Royal Decree was issued on Monday to dissolve the Lower House as of Tuesday, November 24.

A separate decree ordered that legislative elections be held in accordance with the existing Elections Law. No date has been set for the early vote. The Cabinet, which replied to the King’s letter vowing free and fair elections, met last night, but did not announce a date for the new polls.

His Majesty King Abdullah on Thursday inaugurated three five-star hotels and the Aqaba Logistics Village, which seek to leverage the status of the port city as a tourist attraction and a regional logistics centre.The hotels - Kempinski, Radisson Blu and Mövenpick Resort Tala Bay Aqaba - will provide around 1,500 jobs. They will also help draw larger numbers of tourists to Aqaba, especially as the city has been selected as the Arab Tourism Capital for 2011.

The logistics village was implemented by the Kuwait-based Public Warehousing Company (Agility) and the Central Logistics Company (Kawar Group) on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis, at a cost of around JD50 million.

Also yesterday, the King met with several Jordanian and Arab investors in the city.

During the meeting, the King stressed the need to develop methods to draw investments into the city so as to increase economic growth and launch projects that can benefit the local community as well as the national economy.

The King expressed pride in the accomplishments made despite challenges, voicing confidence in the possibility to achieve more through planned and institutionalised work.

During the meeting, also attended by HRH Prince Feisal, Royal Court Chief Nasser Lozi and the King’s Adviser Ayman Safadi, businessmen highlighted the projects achieved so far in the port city, available investment opportunities and ways to overcome obstacles.

Expressing satisfaction with the investment environment in Aqaba and its positive results, investors briefed the King on their views regarding ways to achieve progress in project execution.

Since its launch in 2001, the Aqaba Special Economic Zone has been able to draw $18 billion worth of industrial, service, hotel and education projects.

Jordan’s water resources will be depleted by climate change even if the Kingdom witnesses an increase in precipitation, a report launched on Thursday indicated.Climate change will severely impact the quantity of monthly surface water runoff, according to the report, indicating that even if current rainfall amounts remain unchanged, water basins and surface runoff will decrease due to rising temperatures.

In the Kingdom’s Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), experts noted that even if current rainfall levels increased by 20 per cent, it would not compensate for the water lost due to the expected rise in temperatures.

The report, prepared by the Ministry of Environment, is to serve as the foundation for an analysis of the impact of climate change on the country following the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

The conference is expected to yield a climate change deal building upon the first phase of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, an international and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide that is set to expire in 2012.

The report included an assessment of climate change vulnerability and adaptation in various sectors. It indicated that maximum and minimum temperature time series in 19 meteorological stations across the country have shown significant increasing trends over the past 45 years.

The time series recorded increasing trends in annual maximum temperatures ranging between 0.3°C and 1.8°C, while increasing trends in minimum temperatures ranged between 0.4°C and 2.8°C.

Combining this baseline data with the output of several climate models produced a projected increase in temperatures of less than 2^oC by 2050, the report added.

The assessment also indicated a decreasing trend in the country’s annual rainfall by 5-20 per cent over the past 45 years, indicating that the agriculture sector in Jordan is most vulnerable to climate change due to shrinking water resources.

The 2009 national communication to the UNFCCC said that climate change could have significant impact in particular on rain-fed agriculture, the livestock sector and overall food production.

It underscored that policies and strategies dealing with water scarcity have been developed and adopted, but highlighted that national policies, including the 2008-2022 national water strategy, did not consider stress added to the available water resources due to climate change.

The report was launched during a workshop, titled: “National Inter-Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Change”, organised by the Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme.

The two-day workshop, which concluded on Thursday, aimed at assessing the implications of climate change for key sectors in Jordan and providing participants with an overview of current international climate change negotiations and their links with national policies.

His Majesty King Abdullah on Tuesday urged an effective role on the part of the EU, and particularly the UK, in efforts to make peace in the region that leads to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, said.The King made the remarks during a meeting with visiting British Foreign Minister David Miliband, where they discussed efforts to overcome obstacles that obstruct the launch of Palestinian-Israeli talks.

Palestinians have this week protested what observers saw as a shift in Washington’s stand on peace talks, after US officials commended Israel’s plan to restrict, rather than freeze, the building of settlements in the West Bank.

In response, Amman insisted that all Israeli unilateral measures in the West Bank and Jerusalem end.

At the meeting with the top British diplomat, the Monarch renewed a warning against Israeli policies, especially settlement activity and measures that threaten the identity of East Jerusalem and the holy sites.

The King underlined the need for the international community to act swiftly and effectively to seize the opportunity at hand to realise peace through creating the suitable environment for peace negotiations on the basis of the two-state formula.

His Majesty also called for supporting the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas in pursuit of the Palestinian people’s right to statehood and a normal life free of Israel-imposed daily suffering.

In remarks to the press later in the day, Miliband described Israeli settlements as “illegal and an obstacle to peace” between the Palestinians and Israelis.

“Settlements are illegal in our view and an obstacle to a peace settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Miliband told reporters during a press conference.

“It’s so important for all those who care about security and social justice in this region that discussions about borders and territory are restarted in a serious way, because if you can progress on border and territory, you can resolve the settlement issue,” Miliband said.

The minister, who also met with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, said he discussed with the US official the latest developments regarding the efforts exerted to relaunch the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He did not elaborate.

Miliband added that any alternatives to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are “dark and unwelcome”.

“It’s important we don’t lose sight of the importance of a two-state solution for all peoples of the region. I think the alternatives are dark and unwelcome for all sides,” he said.

“We have to find a credible route to a credible state and credible peace,” the UK official said, adding that in order for peace negotiations to resume “it is important to build trust between all concerned parties in the region in the peace process”.

The Obama administration must devise a fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after losing face with a backtracking on its demands for a full Jewish settlement freeze, analysts said Monday.President Barack Obama’s team has disappointed many Palestinians and other Arabs who long for it to fulfil both its initial tough stance on settlements and a broader pledge to improve ties with the Muslim world, they said.

During a Middle East tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought Monday to reassure Arabs after angering them with her weekend praise of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to restrict settlements as “unprecedented”. The chief US diplomat insisted her administration still opposed settlements as strongly as before.

Disputing her claim is Aaron David Miller, who served as adviser on Middle East peacemaking in previous US administrations.

“Netanyahu has produced nothing short of a masterful performance. He’s outmanoeuvred us. He’s ingratiated himself to the American Jewish community and the administration,” Miller told AFP.

“He’s put [Palestinian leader) Mahmoud Abbas on the defensive and he’s said ‘no’ to the great power, without cost and without consequences,” said the analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.

The “paradox”, he argued, is that an administration which began with a tough policy towards the Israelis and a “sensitive” one towards the Palestinians has now shifted the onus to the Palestinians.

But he said the Obama administration has concluded that it must, at least for now, cooperate with rather than fight the Israelis on an issue like settlements.

The administration, he said, had hoped to revive negotiations on core issues such as the borders of a future Palestinian state by obtaining a total settlement freeze in return for steps by key Arab states to normalise ties with Israel.

Unlike settlements and normalisation, he said, borders, the status of the disputed holy city of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and security for Israel are the core issues.

“They [the Obama team] need to do some fundamental rethinking about what their overall objective is and how they are going to achieve it,” Miller said.

Amjad Atallah, a former legal adviser to the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, said the US shift on settlements has only weakened Abbas further and made him more reluctant than ever to enter peace talks with Israel.

“They [Palestinians] argue that if the United States was not prepared to back up what it said on settlements, why would it be prepared to back up what it might say on borders?” Atallah told AFP.

The members of the US administration, believing in their powers of “moral persuasion”, were caught off guard, said the analyst with the New America Foundation.

“They thought once it got into permanent status negotiations, things would go relatively quickly. What they didn’t count on was the Israeli government’s intransigence,” he added.

Now that that has happened, “how do we go about reestablishing our street cred and what’s our strategy going forward?” he asked.

The administration now needs, Atallah said, to devise a diplomatic strategy that matches the “high-minded principled recognition” that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a central threat to US national security interests.

Instead, the United States is pursuing “a business-as-usual negotiating strategy” that can only ultimately lead to a worsening situation and even violence, he warned.

Obama, in failing to deliver on settlements, seems to have reinforced the Arab narrative that the “Americans are all in the pockets of the Zionists”, according to Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“It’s not going to be easy, but we need to find some way to change topic,” Clawson told AFP when asked about how the US can revive talks.