Region

RAMALLAH/BRUSSELS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a request to join several UN agencies on Tuesday, in a move that could derail a US push to revive faltering peace talks with Israel.

“The Palestinian leadership has unanimously approved a decision to seek membership of 15 UN agencies and international treaties, beginning with the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Abbas said on television after signing the demand during a meeting at his Ramallah headquarters.

“The demands [for membership] will be sent immediately” to the relevant agencies, he said.

“This is not a move against America, or any other party — it is our right, and we agreed to suspend it for nine months,” said Abbas.

The Palestinians agreed to refrain from seeking membership of international bodies and from pursuing legal action against Israel during the nine months of talks that US Secretary of State John Kerry launched in July.

In return, Israel agreed to release 104 long-serving Palestinian prisoners.

But Israel has refused to release the final batch of 26 prisoners, using it as a bargaining chip to try and extend talks beyond their April 29 deadline.

Meanwhile, Kerry cancelled plans to travel Wednesday to Ramallah after both the Israelis and the Palestinians announced moves likely to scuttle the peace talks.

“We are no longer travelling tomorrow,” a senior State Department official said, shortly after Abbas announced the Palestinians would seek membership of 15 UN agencies.

The Palestinians have also repeatedly threatened to resume their action through international courts and the UN over Israel’s settlement expansion on occupied territories in the West Bank and in annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

Israel on Tuesday reissued tenders for hundreds of settler housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement neighbourhood of Gilo, on top of the thousands of new homes it has announced since July.

TRIPOLI — When a militia holding Libya’s eastern ports loaded a North Korean-flagged tanker with oil earlier this month, the Libyan parliament sacked its own prime minister and turned to US commandos to bring its cargo back.

For days the government had threatened to blow up the tanker, called Morning Glory, if it left port. When it sailed off, pro-governmental militiamen even gave chase on boats carrying jeeps mounted with anti-aircraft and cannons.

But that failed, and when the tanker reached international waters Libya’s parliament fired Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, who fled to Europe. A few days later, US Navy SEALS boarded the tanker to end the debacle.

The Morning Glory affair is one of the starkest symbols yet of how weak Libya’s central authority is. Three years after a NATO-supported revolt toppled Muammar Qadhafi, Libya is at the mercy of rival brigades of heavily armed former rebel fighters who openly and regularly defy the new state.

Libya’s parliament agrees on little, its interim government has no army to enforce security let alone impose its will, and a new constitution meant to forge a sense of nation remains undrafted.

In the vacuum, ex-fighters have briefly abducted Zeidan from his Tripoli hotel room, stormed the foreign ministry, and taken over the interior ministry, even before the renegades made their failed attempt to export oil.

Lawmakers joke that they may need to use the secret tunnels Qadhafi built under the capital so they can escape the marauding gunmen.

“Really there is no army, I thought there was one, but then I realised there really isn’t any,” ousted premier Zeidan said from Germany where he fled.

For many Libyans, the joy of freedom after decades under Qadhafi has given way to confusion. Libya has descended into a scramble over the future shape of the nation, with ex-rebel commanders, former exiles, Islamists, tribal leaders, and federalists all jostling for position.

At stake is the stability and integrity of this vast North African territory, rich in both oil and gas.

Neighbouring Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, has made its uprising work. A new constitution was adopted in January, Islamist and secular parties have compromised, and elections are due this year.

Libya, by contrast, is floundering.

“There was a euphoria that accompanied the overthrow of the dictator that did not take into account some of the stark realities... What is the unifying idea here?” one Libya-based Western diplomat asked.

“It’s not as though removing Qadhafi was going to mean the ... box would open and out pops Dubai. All the problems that were covered over, papered over or bribed over or suppressed, they are emerging again.”

Pulling teeth

Working his phone to resolve another Tripoli blackout, Libyan Electricity Minister Ali Mihirig knows better than most how hard it will be to get the country working together. Back in Libya after three decades living in Canada, Mihirig is not only in charge of electricity but has spent the past year as a mediator and negotiator among the country’s myriad factions.

“It is like pulling teeth,” he said of convincing former fighters to put down their guns and abandon their bases.

“It is painful, it is hard, sometimes you need anesthesia... We have strong armed groups... Fortunately or unfortunately, they don’t agree with each other, which keeps this process going.”

The government has negotiated with militia chieftains to give up command posts they seized when they liberated Tripoli. The army is recruiting more and the government co-opted former fighters by putting thousands of them on the state payroll.

But that has often empowered rival militias and created a mishmash of security forces and quasi-official military units. Even on a casual drive outside Tripoli, visitors pass checkpoints manned by guards whose ragtag uniforms are no clue to affiliation.

The former rebel groups, political factions and tribes are proving more loyal to their vision of Libya than to the compromises required in a unified state.

In Benghazi, in the country’s east, three key ports have been seized by a group of former oil security forces who defected with their leader Ibrahim Jathran, a former Qadhafi fighter, last summer. They want more autonomy for the region.

Ethnic Amazigh, the berber people who have long felt oppressed by Libya’s Arab majority, have also targeted the country’s oil infrastructure. Armed Amazigh shut down the vital El Sharara oil field for two months last year to demand more rights in the new constitution.

An Islamist militia, the Operations Room for Libya’s Revolutionaries, has been accused of kidnapping Zeidan and briefly snatching five Egyptian diplomats in Tripoli to secure the freedom of their commander who was arrested in Egypt. Its commander, Shaban Hadia, denied all kidnapping allegations.

Rival militias are also lined up on competing sides of Libya’s divided parliament where Islamists, represented by the Justice and Construction Party, a branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, are deadlocked with the National Forces Alliance, a group of nationalist and liberal parties led by a former Qadhafi official.

But the two most powerful groups in the country are the militias west of the capital, one in the mountain town of Zintan and the other in the port city of Misrata. Bristling with weaponry and a sense of entitlement, the rivals both claim the mantle of champions of the revolution. Each brigade is loosely allied to competing political factions, and neither shows any sign of disarming nor falling in behind the government in Tripoli.

“We are keeping our weapons, not because we want to end the state, but we are waiting for a real organisation to appear,” said Khalid Imohammed, a former military commander in Zintan.

The view from Zintan

Imohammed was a supermarket manager during the Qadhafi years. He took up arms early in the uprising, at first to defend his town, and then to oust the Libyan leader.

These days he feels a new sense of outrage. Like many in Zintan, an impoverished town of around 35,000 people some 140km west of Tripoli, he complains that he has seen little of the oil riches or development he believes the capital and other cities enjoy, and laments the lack of basic services, new schools, hospitals, even a basic water supply.

“Winning this war was a gift from God and made with the courage of the Zintan people,” Imohammed, dressed in traditional brown robes, said. “And what did we get? We didn’t see any change. Now we are in a different war, a political war. But they are just fighting for private gain, not like our sacrifices.”

Zintan city council leader Mohammed Al Waqwaq puts it more succinctly: “Zintanis felt it was a duty to fight. And that duty was not rewarded.”

That’s one reason the group has not given up their greatest prize: Saif Al Islam, Qadhafi’s son, who was captured by the Zintanis, and is still held by them despite requests by both Tripoli and the International Criminal Court in the Hague to hand him over.

City council leaders say Saif will be held and tried in Zintan because it is the only place that can guarantee his security. Tripoli cannot even protect its own prime minister, they say.

The Misrata model

Some 160km from Zintan, the coastal city state of Misrata has been booming since the 2011 uprising. Its port, Libya’s biggest, saw a record number of containers uploaded last year, while the city has big plans for hotels, shopping malls and foreign language schools.

Misrata suffered some of the worst fighting during the rebellion against Qadhafi. But dozens of new outlets from fashion retailers to restaurants now flourish.

“The experience of the war has brought people to work together and help each other,” said Mohammed Al Swayah, manager in the free port authority, who goes on to list business opportunities for foreign firms.

Diplomats have another explanation for the better security in Misrata: regular military units check all vehicles that enter the city, a procedure rare elsewhere in Libya. Misratan entrepreneurs are also paying former rebels to provide security.

Locals are convinced Misrata can be a model for the country. “We in Misrata started already in July 2011 (during the uprising) a plan for future industrial development,” said Bashim Al Tarablus, head of a local business council. “In Benghazi, the revolution was over in three days but they didn’t plan anything for long.”

The Misratan forces make up most of the Libya Shield, the semiofficial armed body created by the transitional parliament to protect Tripoli against a resurgence of pro-Qadhafi forces. Though seen by many as Islamist-leaning, the Shield is a potential backbone of a new army. It is also a powerful counterweight to the Zintan brigades.

‘Difficult to do’

One of the main reasons Libya is failing to pull together is the almost complete absence of strong state institutions.

Libya’s first modern ruler was King Idris, an inward-looking tribesman who mostly stayed at home in the east. Idris was followed by Qadhafi, who shaped the country in his own image.

Both men shunned state institutions and accountability, relying instead on tribes and the largesse and jobs of international oil companies. That helped to buy loyalty and eased social tensions. But while public service ballooned — today some 1.2 million Libyans, almost a fifth of the population, work in the public sector — institutions were neglected.

“Each person is looking only after his [own] interest and not working as nation,” said Ali Mohammed Salem, deputy central bank governor who estimates it will take at least five years to build up an efficient state.

The United Nations and Western governments have cajoled Libya’s factions to keep the transition on track. A committee has been elected to start writing the constitution, and the parliament has agreed it will run elections as soon as possible.

“They need to come to some kind of national consensus on what kind of country they want. It is easy to say and very difficult to do. To do that you need some political leadership,” said another Western diplomat.

The army, built around a core of 8,000, is training with the help of US, British, Italian and Turkish aid. But most programmes have just started.

Shaban Hadia, the commander of the group blamed for kidnapping Zeidan and the Egyptian diplomats, said his group is actually helping maintain security.

“We are now an alternative until the army and the police are created,” the former rebel said. “The country now lives in a quagmire, and that is because our government is weak.”

For Mihirig, the electricity minister turned negotiator, progress is slow but steady.

“It will be a long way before Libyans realise the importance of building democracy, of building a state, and that using arms is not an option anymore,” he said. “The next three to five months are very critical for Libya and will define where the state will go.”

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s parliament on Tuesday passed a law making domestic violence a criminal offence, after a years-long campaign by civil society groups in a sectarian Arab country steeped in conservativism.

Large sectors of Lebanese society have traditionally regarded beatings of women and children as religiously and socially acceptable.

New York-based Human Rights Watch described the bill as “historic”, but pointed to gaps which did not ensure full protection for women.

For its part, leading Lebanese women’s rights organisation Kafa was critical of the law in its current form.

It fails to specifically enshrine protection for women, said Kafa, adding that the law used religious terminology in place of rights-based terms.

Ghassan Mkhayber, an MP who played a key role in lobbying for the law, told AFP: “It is a big step forward in protecting women, we should be proud.

“We now have a law that provides effective protection for women ...

“It’s not the ideal text, but it’s a first step,” Mkhayber said, while stressing that the law must now be enforced.

The law passed after a Kafa-led campaign which saw thousands of demonstrators take to the streets of Beirut on March 8, International Women’s Day.

It came after several women died allegedly from beatings by their husbands.

For Kafa’s Faten Abu Shakra, who led the campaign, the law “does not specifically focus on women”.

She opposed the introduction “by religious men of religious language” into the bill, which fails to specifically refer to marital rape as a crime.

It criminalises causing “harm”, including “beatings” and “threats”, to obtain sex, but the term “conjugal right” is used without mention of consent.

MP Mkhayber said the term aimed to appease Lebanon’s powerful clerics, who had been opposed to the bill outright.

According to Rothna Begum of Human Rights Watch, the law is “a positive step forward in ensuring protection for women from domestic violence”.

She told AFP: “It includes positive steps such as providing for restraining orders against abusers; temporary accommodation for the survivors of abuse.”

The law also “assigns a public prosecutor in each of Lebanon’s six governorates to receive complaints and investigate cases of violence; and establishes specialised family violence units within Lebanon’s domestic police to process complaints.”

But “parliament should seek to urgently reform this new law if it is to ensure women full protection from domestic violence including criminalising marital rape.”

DUBAI — A top Dubai security official, General Dahi Khalfan, has claimed Qatar as forming part of the United Arab Emirates, adding a new dimension to a dispute with Doha.

“Qatar is an integral part of the UAE,” the outspoken Khalfan, a longtime critic of the Doha-backed Muslim Brotherhood, wrote on Twitter on Monday, demanding his country “reclaim” Qatar.

“We must put up signs on our borders with Qatar stating: ‘You are now entering the UAE’s eighth emirate’,” said Khalfan.

The UAE is a seven-member federation.

Leading up to the region’s independence from Britain, Qatar and Bahrain in 1968 joined the Trucial States, as the UAE was then known, but their union fell apart three years later.

The Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain last month withdrew their envoys to Doha, accusing it of meddling in their internal affairs by supporting Islamists.

Qatar is a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, viewed by most conservative monarchies in the Gulf as a threat to their grip on power.

Khalfan, who was Dubai’s police chief before being promoted to second in command of security, has more than 600,000 followers on Twitter.

His comments on Qatar sparked a wave of controversy on the social network.

A Kuwaiti user compared him to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whose troops invaded Kuwait in 1990 calling it Iraq’s 19th province.

TUNIS — Two Tunisian policemen were convicted late Monday of raping a young woman and sentenced to seven years in prison in a case that has captured international attention for the victim.

Earlier in court the two policemen had denied the charge, instead accusing the woman of seeking to have sex with them, provoking an emotional outburst from the alleged victim.

“They denied everything,” Radhia Nasraoui, a lawyer of the young woman known by her pseudonym Meriem Ben Mohamed, told AFP.

One of the accused claimed instead that the young woman had tried to perform oral sex, Nasraoui added.

Koutheir Bouallegue, another of the victim’s lawyers, confirmed the policemen denied raping her.

“One of them admitted that he masturbated,” he said.

After the verdict Nasraoui said she was “very disappointed” and thought it was too “lenient”.

Journalists had been barred from attending the closed court session.

Three police officers faced trial over the incident, which took place in September 2012, two of them accused of rape.

The defendants say they found the young woman and her boyfriend having sex in their car in a Tunis suburb.

According to the charges, they then took the woman to a police car, where two of them took turns to rape her, while the third policeman allegedly tried to extort money from her fiance at a bank cashpoint. He was given a two-year prison sentence, a judicial source told AFP.

The public prosecutor tried unsuccessfully to bring indecency charges against the couple, sparking a storm of protest and a campaign of support for Ben Mohamed, who was 27 when the incident took place.

She emerged from the courtroom crying on Monday afternoon, saying: “When I demand justice, they insult me.”

‘Attacking victim’s character’ 

Emna Zahrouni, another lawyer representing Ben Mohamed, said a member of the defence team emphasised during the hearing that the unmarried young woman regularly had sex, saying his claim was based on the forensic report.

“Their intention is to tell the court that she was not a virgin. They are attacking her character,” knowing that sex outside marriage is taboo, Zahrouni said.

“The only slur left [to the defence] is to call her a whore,” said Radhia Nasraoui.

Speaking before Monday’s hearing, Ben Mohamed, who has already published a book in France entitled “Guilty of Being Raped”, giving her account of what happened, had said she was not optimistic about the outcome of the trial, which she described as an “ordeal”.

But she had voiced determination to see her aggressors punished, saying she would appeal if they got off lightly.

“If only this whole episode would finish. But I will not give up, whatever the verdict,” the young woman told AFP, standing beside her boyfriend.

Outside the court house, a small group of supporters waved banners and shouted slogans, including Amina Sboui, a former member of the radical women’s protest group Femen.

“I’m here to support Meriem and all women victims of rape. Anyone guilty of raping a woman should be punished,” Sboui said, urging victims to take legal action.

“Society has been hard on Meriem,” she added.

A psychologist’s report, commissioned by the court and seen by AFP, diagnosed Ben Mohamed with “depression aggravating a state of post-traumatic stress”.

It said her condition was “directly linked to what she suffered”, and that her symptoms, which included anxiety, adaptation problems and personality disorder, can last for years after a woman is raped.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Jonathan Pollard, the US-born Israeli who is serving life for spying on America, has been raised as a possible key to breaking a logjam in the crisis-hit peace talks.

Sources close to the talks said on Monday that there was a proposal which could see Pollard freed before the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins in mid-April.

US officials have not confirmed the reports.

Pollard was arrested in Washington in 1985 and condemned to life imprisonment for spying on the United States for Israel.

He was last month taken to hospital after he reportedly collapsed in his North Carolina prison cell.

His wife, Esther, told the English-language Jerusalem Post he had undergone surgery for “multiple serious complications in his digestive system”.

In exchange for Pollard’s release, Israel would honour its commitment to release 26 Arab prisoners — including some who are Israeli citizens — whose continued imprisonment is holding up talks.

Israel would also agree to free another group of Palestinian prisoners, but it would not include anyone convicted of anti-Israeli attacks.

The proposal came up on Monday as US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unscheduled stop in Israel where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice in 12 hours and also held talks with Palestinian negotiators.

He was, according to a Palestinian source, to return on Wednesday for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a bid to resolve the prisoner standoff.

On Monday, former Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was held captive in Gaza for more than five years before being released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap, urged Netanyahu to secure Pollard’s release as part of the peace talks.

“I am asking you to make it clear to the Americans that before anything else, Jonathan Pollard must go free,” he wrote in a letter, excerpts of which were published in an Israeli newspaper.

Successive Israeli governments have lobbied unsuccessfully for Pollard’s release and in 1998 it was reported that he was to be freed in a prisoner swap with the Palestinians.

Then CIA Director George Tenet reportedly threatened to resign if Bill Clinton, president at the time, agreed to free Pollard.

The US naval analyst, who was born into a Jewish family from Texas, passed thousands of secret documents about American spy activities in the Arab world to Israel between May 1984 and his arrest in November 1985.

 Financial problems, eccentric behaviour 

He was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995 and officially recognised by the Jewish state as an Israeli spy in 1998.

Israelis say Pollard’s punishment and the long-standing US refusal to reduce his sentence have been particularly harsh, given that he passed on the information to Israel, a strategic ally of the United States.

Netanyahu has formally asked US President Barack Obama to pardon him but Washington has consistently refused.

The case has long been a thorn in the side of relations between Israel and Washington.

Pollard’s arrest sparked a crisis in ties that only ended with Israel promising to end all espionage activities on US soil.

CIA documents declassified in 2012 spoke of his financial problems and eccentric behaviour including a claim at one point that the Irish Republican Army kidnapped his wife.

He told investigators he had been asked by Israel to obtain US information on Arab or Pakistani nuclear programmes and “Arab exotic weaponry”, a former top secret CIA document said.

The document also said Pollard, now 59, provided data on the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headquarters in Tunisia which helped Israel plan a 1985 raid.

And he also handed over a US assessment suggesting Syria had little chance of retaking the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a conflict.

DEIR RAFAT CONVENT, Israel — The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem condemned Tuesday an assault by vandals overnight on a Roman Catholic convent, demanding that security forces catch the perpetrators.

The vandals daubed “Mary is a cow” and “America [is] Nazi Germany” on the walls of the Deir Rafat convent and slashed the tyres of five vehicles parked nearby, security spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Patriarch Fuad Twal, the Holy Land’s senior Roman Catholic prelate, said “we condemn these repeated attacks and expect the police to arrest (those responsible).

“This is not the first time there have been attacks on Christian places of worship and until now we’ve not heard of the trial of anyone involved,” he told AFP at the scene.

The attack, some 30 kilometres west of Jerusalem, also drew condemnation from an interfaith group that represents the main Jewish, Christian and Muslim bodies in the Holy Land.

“The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land expresses its shock and distress on the acts of vandalism and graffiti” at Deir Rafat, a statement said, calling on Israeli authorities “to intensify its efforts” to catch and prosecute those involved.

“The council calls upon people from all faiths to respect all holy places and sites for all three religions, and strongly discourages extremists’ behaviour that exploits or involves religion in a political or territorial dispute.”

Our Lady, Queen of Palestine convent, as it is also known, was founded before the creation of Israel in 1948 and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The incident there bore the hallmarks of a so-called “price tag” attack — a euphemism for a politically motivated act of vandalism by hardline Jewish settlers.

Although the attacks initially targeted Palestinians and their property, the scope has expanded to include anyone seen as opposed to the settlements.

Over the past few years, churches and Christian graveyards, anti-settlement activists and even, on occasion, the Israeli army have been targeted.

Very few perpetrators have been caught or prosecuted.

Last July, two suspects were arrested on suspicion of a 2012 incident in which vandals torched the door of a Trappist monastery in Latrun, some 10 kilometres from Deir Rafat.

They also scrawled “Jesus is a monkey” on a nearby wall, shocking the religious and political establishment.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli army said Monday it is to open a new investigation into the March 10 killing of a Jordanian judge by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank border crossing.

The probe will be carried out in coordination with Jordanian authorities, it said.

“The Israeli army prosecutor’s office has decided to open a new investigation into this incident,” an army spokeswoman told AFP.

“An investigation was carried out immediately after the incident in the form of witnesses being questioned,” the army said in a statement.

“But at the instruction of the political leadership, the military command of the Central Region [covering the West Bank] has decided to open a new probe.”

The shooting death of Judge Raed Zuaiter caused a furore in Jordan, which has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

Israeli troops killed Zuaiter, 38, at a border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, claiming he had attacked them and tried to take one of their weapons.

But his family, witnesses and Palestinian rights groups dispute the army’s account, saying he was killed during a row with the soldiers after they insulted him.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US Secretary of State John Kerry flew in Monday to Tel Aviv on his latest mission to salvage peace talks after the Palestinians rejected an Israeli proposal for extending negotiations.

US peace efforts are teetering on the brink of collapse after Israel refused to free a group of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners under an agreement which brought the sides back to the negotiating table in July 2013.

Furious Palestinian officials have warned that unless Israel changes its stance on the prisoner releases, it could signal the end of the talks.

Kerry’s arrival in Tel Aviv came as the Palestinian leadership was to meet in the West Bank town of Ramallah to discuss the latest stand-off.

The unscheduled visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories came soon after a Palestinian official confirmed Ramallah had rejected an Israeli offer to extend talks beyond an April 29 deadline.

With his work cut out, Kerry is likely to hold meetings in Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Kerry’s team had been working with both parties to “agree on a path forward”.

“After consulting with his team, Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” she told reporters in Paris shortly before departing for Tel Aviv.

Washington has been fighting an uphill battle to coax the two sides into accepting a framework proposal which would extend the negotiations beyond April 29 to the end of the year.

But the question of extending the talks has become intricately tied up with the fate of the 26 prisoners.

Just a day ahead of the expected releases, Israel said it would not free detainees convicted of deadly attacks unless the Palestinians would commit to extending the negotiations.

But the Palestinians say they will not even discuss any extension of the negotiating period unless Israel frees the prisoners.

The impasse has triggered “intense” US efforts to resolve the dispute, with Kerry speaking with both sides earlier on Monday.

Israel’s ‘blackmail policy’ 

Ahead of Kerry’s arrival, a Palestinian official told AFP the leadership had rejected an Israeli proposal to resolve the dispute that was laid out at a meeting of the two negotiating teams in Jerusalem on Sunday night.

“Israel made a proposal which was refused by the Palestinians,” he said.

“Israel is practising a policy of blackmail and linking its agreement to releasing the fourth batch of prisoners with the Palestinians accepting to extend the negotiations,” he said.

In exchange for Palestinian agreement to continue the talks, Israel had offered to free the fourth batch of detainees and to release another 420 others.

But that number would involve only common law criminals and not sick detainees, women or children. And it would not include political heavyweights.

And although the Israelis were offering a partial settlement freeze in the West Bank, it would not be extended to annexed East Jerusalem, nor would it cover construction where tenders had already been published.

“The Israeli proposal aims to continue the negotiations indefinitely, without any results, in parallel with continued settlement building,” he charged, saying such policies posed a “real danger” to the peace process.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fate of the US-brokered peace process would likely be sealed within the coming days, telling ministers: “Either the matter will be resolved or it will blow up.”

And he said any deal to extend the negotiations would have to be put to the Cabinet.

Also on Sunday, Kerry said the US would reserve judgement on the issues but that the time to make decisions was at hand.

“We’ll see where we are tomorrow [Monday] when some judgements have to be made,” he said.

It was Kerry’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since early January, although he has held face-to-face meetings with both Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Europe and the United States.

He also met Abbas last week in Amman.

TRIPOLI — Libya has released three rebel fighters who had boarded a tanker loading oil at a rebel-held port before it was returned to Tripoli by the US navy, an official said on Monday.

The attorney general ordered the release following comments by some lawmakers that this would help solve the blockage of oil ports by the rebels, Sadiq Al Sour, head of the attorney’s investigations department, told Reuters.

The eastern rebels, who have seized three major ports to press for a greater share of oil revenue and regional autonomy, had demanded the release of the fighters before starting any talks about lifting the blockage.

Three weeks ago, the rebel militia managed to load crude onto the Morning Glory tanker at the Es Sider port, which is under their control. US special forces later stormed the ship and returned it to Libya.

Sour said he regretted the release which had been made on political grounds. “These are people who committed crimes,” he said. “Now justice is entering political conflicts.”

The government and parliament had told the militia to negotiate an end to their port blockade or face a military offensive. The rebels had demanded the release of their men, the tanker returned and the threat of an army offensive dropped.

Tripoli has been trying to end the port blockage because the government badly needs oil revenue. The three ports previously accounted for more than 600,000 barrels a day of exports, adding to the effects of oilfield closures in the west.

The port blockade is one of many challenges facing the government which has failed to secure the country three years after the fall of Muammar Qadhafi.