Israel rules out 'territorial concessions' to Palestinians
(BERLIN) - Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Saturday ruled out any "territorial concessions" to the Palestinians that do not contribute to a settlement of the Middle East conflict.
The conflict is a "battle of cultures that cannot be resolved by territorial concessions", Lieberman said in an interview with the weekly Spiegel to be published on Monday.
While the United States is trying to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process through indirect talks under the aegis of US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Lieberman said that "We now expect the Americans to put pressure on the Palestinians".
Mitchell was to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and Palestinian authority chairman Mahmud Abbas the day after.
Last week Mitchell postponed a visit to Jerusalem amid US criticism of Israeli plans to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem, which had been announced during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden.
The envoy its trying to convince Israelis and the Palestinians to resume the indirect talks, a process that was threatened by anger over the announcement of renewed Jewish settlement building on Arab land.
"We did not provoke anybody," Lieberman said, adding that east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war, is a constituent part of the Israeli capital.
"Jerusalem is not negotiable," he said.
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