Crowds of mourners carry the bodies of teenage cousins Mohammed and Osaid Kaddous, two of the four Palestinians killed by Israeli troops over the weekend

James Hider, Jerusalem

Israeli troops killed four Palestinians as unrest spread across the West Bank and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, headed to Washington hoping to repair relations with the United States.

The deaths followed rioting last week in and around Jerusalem, sparked by the announcement of Israel’s plans for new homes in the occupied east of the city where Palestinians want their future capital.

Fresh protests erupted yesterday near the settlement of Tekoa, home to Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister.

Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers who said that the men had attacked one of their comrades with pitchforks at a checkpoint outside Nablus. The unrest was prompted by Palestinian anger at restrictions on access to farmland which is close to an Israeli settlement, near the village of Iraq Burin.

This followed the funerals of two other Palestinians, Mohammed Kaddous, 16, and his cousin, Osaid, 17, shot dead by Israeli troops confronting stone-throwing Palestinian youths on Saturday. Israeli commanders said that their troops had used rubber bullets to quell riots.

Ghassan Khatib, an aide to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, said: “We look at this as part of the Israeli escalation. It could have been treated in a completely different way. But the Israelis have been escalating, and this is something the Prime Minister has been warning against.”

The fresh violence coincided with George Mitchell’s arrival in the region. The US special envoy is trying to revive indirect talks between the rivals. They collapsed two weeks ago when Israel announced the construction of 1,600 Jewish homes in mainly Arab East Jerusalem — just as Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Israel.

The snub, described by the White House as humiliating, opened a deep rift between Israel and its closest ally. Mr Netanyahu hopes to placate the US during his trip through goodwill gestures, such as easing Israel’s three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip and delaying the controversial housing project.

His offer may not go far enough, however, for his American hosts who have demanded a complete settlement freeze.

Before his departure, Mr Netanyahu made clear that he was not prepared to cancel such projects. Trying to strike a balance between the demands of his right-wing nationalist coalition and the expectations of the Obama Administration, he told his Cabinet yesterday that he remained committed to settlement expansion.

“Our policy on Jerusalem is the same as that of all previous Israeli governments in the past 42 years, and it hasn’t changed,” he said. “As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv. We made this clear to the US Administration.”

The Prime Minister also told his Cabinet that the US-mediated talks with the Palestinians would include a discussion of the main issues separating them, but added that a “real resolution” of the conflicts could only be achieved by direct talks.

These issues include the status of Jerusalem, the final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war that created Israel.

Mr Netanyahu’s tough stance on settlements has soured diplomatic relations with the US and other friendly countries. The Israeli media reported that he had enraged his closest European ally, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, by leaking details of a tense conversation he had held with her on the settlement issue, breaking a promise to keep the talks confidential.

With no breakthrough in sight, Shlomo Ben Ami, a former Israeli Foreign Minister, warned that President Obama, who promised at the beginning of his term last year to tackle the Middle East conflict, could present a unilateral peace plan to cut through the deadlock. He said that the US Administration was “capable of bringing down an Israel government through such pressure. It’s clear that such an American plan, laid on the table, doesn’t make it easy for Netanyahu’s coalition”.

He claimed that he had been informed of such a plan by an unnamed senior US official.

Mr Netanyahu will be hoping to forestall any such move when he sees Mr Obama tomorrow at a hastily arranged meeting tacked on to a planned trip to address Jewish organisations in Washington.

After falling out with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, over the settlement issue, Mr Netanyahu called her and promised to make concessions. That prompted her to issue a conciliatory statement describing their conversation as “useful and productive”.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, said after meeting Mr Mitchell that it was Israel’s “hope that indirect talks get started right away and will lead to direct talks as soon as possible”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7070...