Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet on Tuesday with U.S. President Barack Obama in a bid to repair ties with Washington strained over Israel's plans for new settlement construction in the Palestinian territories.
Israel's decision to build 1,600 new homes for Jewish families in the disputed territory in East Jerusalem, announced during U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, has infuriated the U.S., as it has posed a threat to the resumption of U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian indirect peace talks.
Washington, however, has rejected the allegations, saying Israel was still one of the U.S.'s "closest allies."
Israel, which is the main recipient of U.S. foreign aid reaching $2.4 billion annually, was fast to apologize for the bad timing of its announcement, but has rejected the demand by the U.S. to scrap its new construction plans.
During his stay in Washington, Netanyahu has already held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden.
In a telephone conversation on Friday, Clinton and Netanyahu agreed to take a series of "trust-building measures" that represented "a real effort" to aid U.S. peace efforts.
Details of the talks have not yet been made public. However, Israeli officials say Netanyahu has agreed to include in the agenda of the U.S.-mediated "proximity talks" with the Palestinians all outstanding issues of the Middle East settlement.
Besides the talks with Obama, the Israeli prime minister is expected to deliver a speech at a forum of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday. According to a source Netanyahu's establishment, he is going to assert Israel's right to continue settlement construction in East Jerusalem in his speech.
Speaking at the forum of the pro-Israel lobby group on Monday, the U.S. secretary of state warned that the status quo was "unsustainable" and called for Israel to make "difficult but necessary choices" to break the deadlock in peace talks with the Palestinians.
New construction in the Palestinian territories "undermines mutual trust" and "exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region hope to exploit", she said, adding it was Washington's "responsibility to give credit when it is due and to tell the truth when it is needed".
Under the internationally agreed roadmap for Middle East peace, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement construction activity and remove unauthorized outposts built since 2001 from Palestinian territories.
TEL AVIV, March 23 (RIA Novosti)
