Throwing a damper on the Obama administration’s push for Arab support behind new Middle East peace talks, Jordan on Aug. 3 mirrored Saudi Arabia in publicly rejecting U.S. appeals to improve relations with Israel to help restart negotiations.
After talks in Washington with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said confidence-building measures that the United States wants Arab states to take will not produce a resolution to the conflict.
As Clinton looked on at a news conference at the State Department, Judeh rebuffed calls for Arabs to take incremental steps in normalizing relations with Israel before Israel agrees to withdraw from occupied Arab territory.
“In the Middle East, there has been in the past an overinvestment, perhaps, by the parties in pursuing confidence-building measures, conflict-management techniques, including transitional arrangements, and an overemphasis on gestures, perhaps at the expense of reaching the actual end game,” he said.
Judeh said that “piecemeal approaches that never lead to peace and that have proven repeatedly to be confidence-eroding, rather than confidence-building,” must be avoided.
Moreover, he criticized Israel for its refusal to halt construction of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and said the Israelis should respond to a 2002 Arab peace offer.
“Now, in 2009, many would say it is time for Israel to reciprocate,” he said.
Judeh’s comments marked the second time in a three-day period that an Arab foreign minister bluntly refused U.S. calls to improve ties with Israel — with measures such as opening trade offices, allowing academic exchanges and permitting civilian Israeli aircraft to fly in their airspace.
On July 31, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal expressed similar sentiments, also at a news conference with Clinton. Unlike Jordan, though, which has signed a peace deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel.
Despite the statements, Clinton maintained that U.S. special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell was making progress and praised Jordan for its playing “a strong and vital role” in the region and expressed hope that negotiations could soon resume.
She also criticized Israel for evicting Palestinian families in east Jerusalem over the weekend.
“I think these actions are deeply regrettable,” Clinton said. “The eviction of families and demolition of homes in east Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations and I urge the government of Israel and municipal officials to refrain from such provocative actions.”
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said later that the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, had spoken to Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Oren on Aug. 2 to “express our concern about this step.”