Israelis, Palestinians resume direct talks

After a day and evening in White House talks with US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were sitting down together on Thursday for the first of what American officials hope will be a series of meetings that lead in a year’s time to an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state.

“This moment of opportunity may not soon come again,” Obama said at the White House Wednesday night.

Obama said he was “cautiously hopeful” about the talks, which begin with dim expectations and have been marred by two shooting attacks against Israelis in as many days.

Mediated at the State Department by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell, the two leaders’ discussions face numerous obstacles, not least renewed violence and provocations from Israelis and Palestinians opposed to the goal of an independent Palestine.

Gunmen from the Palestinian Hamas group, which opposes the talks, killed four Israeli residents of a West Bank settlement on Tuesday as Netanyahu, Abbas and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan convened in Washington.

And on Wednesday, hours before the leaders were to eat dinner together at the White House, unidentified gunmen wounded two Israelis as they drove in their car in another part of the West Bank. Hamas claimed responsibility for that attack as well.

After the first attack, security forces loyal to Abbas, who heads a moderate government in the West Bank, quickly rounded up 250 Hamas members and supporters. Netanyahu said the violence would not disrupt the talks.

Before the White House dinner with Netanyahu, Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Obama said they all had a stake in the peace efforts as leaders and fathers. “Do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?” Obama asked in the packed East Room of the White House. Each of the leaders spoke of his hopes for a breakthrough, with the US playing the role of peace broker, but the event was subdued, reflecting broad pessimism about chances of success after nearly two decades of failed peace talks.

Netanyahu obsessed with security

Israelis “recognize that another people shares this land with us,” Netanyahu said at the White House on Wednesday. But he said any agreement must guarantee Israel’s security and could not be a repeat of Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon, where territory evacuated was seized by Iran-backed militants who launched further attacks on Israel.

“We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, and we got terror once again. We want to ensure that territory we concede will not be turned into a third Iranian-sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel,” he said.

Abbas joined Netanyahu in declaring that it was time to seize the moment. “We don’t want blood to be shed, neither that of Palestinians nor of Israelis. We want peace, we want normal life. We want to live as partners and neighbors,” he said. But Israel, Abbas added, needs to give the Palestinians tangible signs, including freeing all Palestinian prisoners and freezing all settlement construction on land the Palestinians want for their future state.

The talks will face their first test within weeks, at the end of September, when the Israeli government’s declared slowdown in settlement construction is slated to end.

Palestinians have said a renewal of settlement construction will torpedo the talks. The Israeli government is divided over the future of the slowdown, and a decision to extend it could split Netanyahu’s hawkish coalition. Netanyahu has given no indication so far that it will continue beyond the deadline. Speaking to Clinton on Tuesday, Netanyahu said his government’s decision on a 10-month freeze that would end in September remained in effect.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke off nearly two years ago, in December 2008, and the Obama administration spent its first 20 months in office coaxing the two sides back to the bargaining table. Despite the success in launching the talks, gaps between the sides are wide, distrust remains after years of violence and deadlock, and expectations are low.

Settlers start new construction

Hours before peace talks were set to begin in Washington, Jewish settlers defiantly announced plans on Thursday to launch new construction in their West Bank enclaves in a test of strength with Palestinian militants. Naftali Bennett, director of the settlers’ YESHA council, told Reuters settlers would begin building homes and public structures in at least 80 settlements, breaking a partial government freeze on building that ends on Sept. 26. “The idea is that de facto it [the freeze] is over,” Bennett said, criticizing the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks as aiming for a “phony peace” and rejecting Palestinian demands for a halt to settlement building on land they want for a state. “Once they understand Israelis are here to stay and only growing stronger day by day, they will give up,” Bennett said. The settlers, who have threatened to depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he does not let them resume building after Sept. 26, ended the freeze unilaterally on Wednesday, the day after gunmen killed four settlers in the occupied West Bank. Pro-settler parties are a majority in Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and a number of cabinet ministers have already backed demands to resume settlement construction. Earth-moving vehicles and cement mixers went to work in several settlements on Wednesday, breaking ground for homes and community centers. Jerusalem Reuters/AP