Deputy PM: U.S. should honor past deals on settlements

Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said Tuesday that U.S. calls for a freeze on West Bank settlement construction run counter to past agreements between the two nations and could undermine U.S. credibility.

Speaking to foreign reporters, Meridor said it was important for past understandings to be honored. "Otherwise, it would raise questions about the legitimacy of future agreements," he said.

"It is of great importance to us that what the American administration agreed to is not overlooked, not because of the contents of that agreement, [but] because of contents of agreements in the future," he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Israel to halt all settlement construction as a confidence-building move to get stalled peace negotiations back on track.

Meridor, who is also intelligence and atomic energy minister, added: "We never had an agreement with the previous administration. We had an agreement with America.

"The agreement we had with the Americans is binding on us and them ... They should keep to the agreement."

The deputy prime minister's comments underscored the growing rift between Israel and the U.S. over the continued construction of homes in the settlements. Meridor, a respected veteran of Israeli politics, is considered one of the most moderate voices in the new government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would not build any new settlements, but that construction must be permitted inside existing settlements to accommodate what he calls natural growth in their populations.

Israeli officials and former White House official Eliot Abrams have cited a series of written and oral understandings reached with the Bush administration that appear to permit limited settlement construction.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, said in the West Bank Tuesday that, "What is required from Israel is to freeze all settlement activity... When Israel meets these demands, we will be ready to go to the final negotiations."

Meridor expressed hope that the differences would soon be bridged.

"In the coming weeks, I think that we will see, I certainly hope so, the resumption of negotiations," he said. He noted that Palestinians conducted three years of negotiations with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, while settlements expanded.

Nearly 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six Day war and claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future independent state.