U.S. envoy visits Middle East amid Israel's rejection against Jerusalem building halt

JERUSALEM, April 22 (Xinhua) -- United States special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell arrived in the region on Thursday, several days before he was originally slated to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

His visit comes on the day the Israeli media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formally rejected a request from U.S. President Barack Obama for Israel to halt all construction work in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli move could well mean that the already frozen peace process with the Palestinians is now further from being jumpstarted than ever.

At the last time Mitchell was in the Middle East, around a month ago, he was trying to find ways to bring the parties together for indirect or proximity talks. This time around, he may have no choice other than to try to perform CPR on a process that most local experts believe is doomed to fail.

JERUSALEM THE CRUX

It is understood that last weekend Israel handed a letter from Netanyahu to Obama answering around a dozen questions on which the White House was seeking clarifications. While supposedly the answers on all the other issues were satisfactory, the key American demand regarding East Jerusalem was turned down by the Israeli premier.

The trouble as far as Netanyahu is concerned is that no Israeli prime minister, of any political persuasion, has ever stopped construction in what Israel sees as its indivisible capital, said Naji Shurab, a professor of political science Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

While the international community views East Jerusalem as occupied territory, and the Palestinians see it as the capital of any future state. Some 250,000 Arabs live on that side of the city.

Politically, Jerusalem is the red line that no Israeli leader has ever crossed. The vast majority of MPs in Netanyahu's hawkish coalition object to any territorial compromise in the city.

However, the Palestinians are insisting they will not come to the negotiating table if Israel continues to build in the eastern half of the city.

This has left Obama, Mitchell and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in something of a bind. Their discomfort was added to when Israel announced initial approval for a 1,600 housing unit project in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The details were made public on the day U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden was in the city at the start of March.

GOODWILL MEASURES

Publication of the details of Netanyahu's letter to Obama will come as a blow to the American leader and possible to the Israeli premier too, said David Ricci, a professor of politics and American studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"President Obama probably doesn't want a lot of publicity about this during an election year, so they're trying to find some way of sweeping it under the rug momentarily," Ricci said on Thursday.