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JERUSALEM : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the Palestinians to restart peace talks, after Washington backed his position on the thorny issue of settlements.
"I hope very much that the Palestinians will come to their senses and enter the peace process," Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting.
"The peace process is an Israeli interest as much as it is a Palestinian one."
The premier spoke a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed his "unprecedented" position on settlements and backed his call that negotiations should resume despite the Palestinians' insistence that Israel should first freeze all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
"What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements... is unprecedented," Clinton said, adding "there has never been a precondition. It's always been an issue within negotiations".
It marked a sharp easing of tone by Washington on the delicate issue of settlements.
In May, after US President Barack Obama's first meeting with Netanyahu, Clinton had said Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions".
Armed with US backing, Netanyahu criticised the Palestinians for "setting preconditions".
"We have shown a willingness to do unprecedented things to relaunch the process," he said on Sunday.
"But we are encountering the opposite from the Palestinians. We are encountering preconditions from the Palestinians that haven't been set in all the 16 years of the peace process.
"This reality is clear to everyone today," he said. "It's clear to the international community and of course the United States."
The Palestinians have argued that halting settlements is not a precondition they are setting, but an obligation Israel undertook when it signed the 2003 international roadmap for Middle East peace.
The international community considers Israeli settlements on Palestinian land as illegal. - AFP/ms
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