Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has reportedly met stiff opposition within his cabinet to a US proposal for freezing settlement construction in the West Bank for 90 days. Netanyahu's cabinet has been mulling the proposal for two weeks, and the stakes for a future peace deal with the Palestinians might be high. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Sunday said he will not return to peace talks with Israel unless there is a freeze on settlement building that includes East Jerusalem.

Relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have become considerably tense following a telephone conversation between the two leaders 10 days ago. During that conversation, the French leader apparently asked Netanyahu to extend the settlement freeze in the West Bank so that peace talks with the Palestinians could be resumed.

Every recent Israeli prime minister has done things he never dreamed of doing. I won't go through the whole list, but consider Yitzhak Rabin's pivot from "break their bones" to the prince of peace, Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza, and Ehud Olmert's pained conclusion that an agreement with the Palestinians required "a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all" the occupied territories.

The more stridently Israel insists on Palestinian recognition of it as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the more adamantly the Palestinian leadership seems to refuse. As a result, some senior Israeli officials are beginning to question the wisdom of the policy of their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made recognition of the legitimacy of the Jewish nation-state a prerequisite for any final agreement with the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, saying that only then they will be ready to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Army Radio reported Friday. Speaking at a meeting of worldwide Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Friday, Netanyahu said that peace must be based on a mutual agreement.

Netanyahu stands at Israel s new political center, which is to the right of where it was five years ago. An iron-clad Israeli narrative exists: We removed settlements from Gaza and look what we got - Hamas rockets! That s the prism through which withdrawal from the West Bank is viewed. You can dispute the narrative but it s there. So Palestinians must deal with it. Their thirst for sovereignty is matched only in intensity by Israel s insistence on security. Here lies the hinge of peace. In reality the Jewish state opening gambit is an attempt to settle the Palestinian refugee issue ahead of discussion of other final-status questions like borders. That can t work. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has said a peace accord would settle all historical demands code for refugees and enough for now.

Senior Palestinian Authority officials on Friday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting to foil the peace process, after the premier approved tenders for construction of nearly 240 new housing units east of the Green Line. "The Netanyahu government is determined to thwart any chance of resuming direct negotiations," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, hours after media sources reported that Israel was moving ahead for the first planned construction of this kind in months.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his forum of top ministers on Tuesday afternoon to debate extending Israel's moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements for 60 days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late on Saturday urged the Palestinians not to quit peace talks as negotiations hit a crisis point over Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank. Earlier in the day, a senior Palestinian official said talks could not continue unless Israel renewed a 10-month construction freeze that expired last week. In response, Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of violating the spirit of negotiations, which began in Washington a month ago, by imposing preconditions.