U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening and held a joint news conference with him.
Netanyahu declared that Israel is willing to sit down with the Arab authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria for negotiations, immediately and without preconditions. He also agreed to commit that “Israel will not build new settlements and is willing to adopt a policy of restraint in the settlements, but that it will be one that enables normal life.”
Clinton praised Netanyahu, saying that "what the Prime Minister has offered... a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described, no new starts, for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations." She also said that Israel's freezing construction "has never been a precondition [for negotiations], it has always been an issue within the negotiations."
Before meeting Netanyahu, Secretary Clinton met with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. “It is unacceptable that the Palestinians set preconditions for opening negotiations,” he said, “and if that is the case, Israel has some preconditions of its own.”