Long-delayed indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are expected to start in early May, an Israeli minister said Tuesday.
Cabinet Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer would not confirm media reports that Israel had agreed to a de-facto, unannounced construction freeze in annexed East Jerusalem, saying only that "understandings" had been reached which would allow the US-mediated indirect negotiations to "start very soon."
This, said Ben-Eliezer, meant the first or second week of May, DPA reported.
"I can tell you that a certain opening has been created," the minister told Israel Radio
The Arab League first had to endorse the understandings in a May 1 summit, but the minister expressed hope it would do so, saying: "I have not a shadow of a doubt that the Arab League ... will give its blessing to this thing."
Israel has publically vowed that it will not stop building in Jewish neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem.
"The prime minister has expressed his position clearly which is that we won't accept the Palestinian demand for a freeze in Jerusalem as a precondition for the proximity talks," Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the German Press- Agency dpa Tuesday.
Local media nonetheless quoted officials in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party as saying that Israel, although it refused a public declaration to freeze building in East Jerusalem, would on the ground avoid "provocative" projects for the about four months of the indirect talks.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were broken off in late 2008, as Israel headed into new elections that saw Netanyahu's nationalist Likud party return to power. The talks have not resumed since the Netanyahu government took office more than one year ago.
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