PARIS — Led by Europe, international donors on Monday pledged $7.4 billion over three years to help stateless Palestinians as new peace talks begin with Israel, yet old Mideast fights over disputed land and freedom of movement shadowed the largest show of support for the Palestinians in more than a decade.
World leaders at the conference urged Israel to ease limits on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, following up on a warning from the World Bank that without an easing of the sweeping physical and administrative restrictions donors may be wasting their money.
Israel has been reluctant to lift scores of roadblocks in the West Bank, many of them put there by the Israeli military amid the street violence and suicide bombings by Palestinian militants that followed collapse of the last peace talks seven years ago.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas used the session to demand that Israel freeze Jewish settlements without excuses or exception.
Palestinians are outraged by Israel’s announcement, within days of the formal start of the new peace effort at a U.S.-backed peace conference last month, that it planned hundreds of new Jewish houses in the West Bank.
“It’s the moment of truth,” Abbas told some 90 donor countries and international organizations gathered Monday in Paris. “I’ll be eager to implement all our commitments,” Abbas said, and “I expect them to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions.”
West Bank settlements are an emotional issue on both sides, and a practical problem for peacemakers trying to draw boundaries of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008.
Additional Jewish homes on land claimed by the Palestinians complicate the task, and the latest announcement from Israel has undermined Palestinian confidence in the infant talks.
