US President Barack Obama last Tuesday met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for talks that yielded no signs of a breakthrough on reviving negotiations to end the six-decade conflict. In a speech at the UN General Assembly a day later, Obama said "the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions," a tacit admission that he may be unable to first secure a freeze on Israeli settlements.
A US official on Saturday said Washington was still trying to put together a package of reciprocal Israeli, Arab and Palestinian steps -- including a settlements freeze -- in advance but that this could not hold up the start of talks. "We don't want to have the perfect be the enemy of the good," US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman told reporters. "We're not going to wait for the perfect package before we start negotiations."
US officials had hoped that Tuesday's meeting would allow Obama to announce that peace negotiations would resume. The United States had tried in advance to work out a deal under which Israel would halt settlement building, Palestinians would do more to prevent attacks on Israelis and Arab states would move toward normalizing ties with the Jewish state.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met senior officials from nine Arab states to discuss those issues as well as Iran's nuclear program and recent violence in Iraq and Yemen. Clinton said she was pleased with what she heard from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members as well as officials from Egypt, Iraq and Jordan but declined to say whether they might support the start of talks without a settlement freeze.
