US President Barack Obama & Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday in a bid to ease strained ties but with dim hopes for any breakthrough in the stalled Middle East peace process, reports Reuters.

The talks, unusually low profile for a visiting Israeli leader, were held a day after Netanyahu struck a defiant note in the face of new US criticism of Jewish home construction in a part of the occupied West Bank annexed to Jerusalem.

American and Israeli officials have sought to get relations back on track after the housing dispute touched off the worst diplomatic rift between Washington and its close ally since Obama took office last year.

In a sign of White House concerns about lingering tensions, press coverage of the Oval Office talks was barred, and the leaders made no public statements afterward.

Netanyahu, under pressure from members of his right-leaning coalition, was showing few signs of backing down on settlement construction on occupied land in and around Jerusalem.

His talks with Obama coincided with new reports in Israeli media that Israel’s Jerusalem municipality had given final approval for a Jewish housing project announced last July.

Before seeing Obama, Netanyahu told US lawmakers he feared peace talks may be delayed for another year unless Palestinians drop their demand for a full freeze on Jewish settlements.

“We must not be trapped by an illogical and unreasonable demand,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders, according to his spokesman.

“The Palestinians are raising a new demand. If it’s adopted, we could lose another year,” Netanyahu said of the Palestinians’ condition of a settlement freeze before a resumption of peace talks, suspended since December 2008.

Palestinian officials said it was Netanyahu’s policy that was keeping the peace process in limbo.

Out of the Spotlight
The Palestinians retreated from their agreement to begin indirect, US-mediated peace talks two weeks ago after Israel announced plans to build 1,600 homes for Jews in the settlement of Ramat Shlomo near East Jerusalem.

The announcement of the disputed housing project embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden during a visit to Israel this month and drew strong US condemnation. Netanyahu insisted he had been blindsided by Israeli bureaucrats.

Shortly before Netanyahu met Obama, Israeli media reported that Israel’s Jerusalem municipality gave final approval last Thursday to a separate plan to build 20 homes for Jews on the site of a defunct hotel in East Jerusalem.

Despite a promise from Netanyahu of confidence-building steps — which have not been disclosed publicly — to encourage Palestinians to return to talks, the White House sought to keep his meeting with Obama out of the spotlight.

It was held in the evening after Obama signed a landmark US healthcare reform bill. Netanyahu met Obama for about 90 minutes, a White House spokesman said. But the prime minister did not leave until about two hours later, possibly after meeting Obama aides.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu planned to use his visit to discuss US-led efforts to pressure Iran, the Jewish state’s arch-foe, over its nuclear program.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, in a 1967 war and regards all of Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu’s policy is the one that is obstructing the return to negotiations,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

“We are ready to go back to negotiations if Netanyahu adheres to what came in the statement of the Quartet.”

At a meeting in Moscow on Friday, the quartet of mediators — the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — called on Israel to freeze settlement activity in line with a 2003 peace “road map.” That plan also obliged the Palestinians to take action to disarm militants.

Netanyahu began his Washington visit on Monday, declaring in an address to the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC that “Jerusalem is not a settlement.”