02/09/2010 Israeli and Palestinian leaders are set to resume direct talks on Thursday, seeking to clinch an elusive peace deal for the Middle East within a year.As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas prepared to sit down for their first direct talks in 20 months, Hamas claimed responsibility for the West Bank shooting of two Israelis.
That attack came just a day after four Israeli settlers were killed in a shooting on Tuesday also claimed by Hamas, which is vehemently opposed to the peace negotiations.
Despite the attacks US President Barack Obama called on both sides not to let slip a fleeting opportunity for peace, a Palestinian state and a secure Israel within a year, as he gathered the two leaders, with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the White House on Wednesday."I am hopeful, cautiously hopeful, but hopeful," Obama said in the crowded East Room of the White House. Earlier Obama had met with each of the leaders individually, and they gathered afterward for dinner.
The mood appeared cordial as the leaders commenced the talks aimed at creating a sovereign Palestinian state beside a secure Israel.
Abbas and Netanyahu shook hands warmly and thanked Obama for pressing for the renewed talks despite such seemingly intractable differences as Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Netanyahu said his nation desires a lasting peace, not an interlude between wars. He called Abbas "my partner in peace," and said, "Everybody loses if there is no peace."
Abbas urged Israel to freeze settlement construction in areas the Palestinians want as part of their new state, and to end its blockade of Gaza, which is controlled by the Hamas movement. The settlements issue is a central obstacle to achieving a permanent peace.
"We will spare no effort and we will work diligently and tirelessly to ensure these negotiations achieve their cause," Abbas said, as translated into English.
With the Israelis and Palestinians far apart on key issues, expectations for the Washington talks are low, yet the stakes are high.
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke off in December 2008, in the final weeks of the George W. Bush administration. The Obama administration spent its first 20 months in office coaxing the two sides back to the bargaining table.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a constant source of grievance and unrest in the Muslim world. The failure of past peace efforts has left both sides with rigid demands and public ambivalence about the value of a negotiated settlement.
American officials are hopeful they can at least get the two sides this week to agree to a second round of talks, likely to be held in the second week of September. That could be followed by another meeting between Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly near the end of the month in New York.
Beyond the settlements, Israel and the Palestinians face numerous hurdles, notably the borders of a future Palestinian state, the political status of occupied Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Also complicating the outlook are internal Palestinian divisions that have led to a split between Abbas' West Bank-based administration and Hamas, which is in control of Gaza. Hamas is not part of the negotiations and has asserted that talks will be futile.
Each of the leaders pledged to work diligently toward peace, but they also made plain that their own national interests must be satisfied.
"We do not seek a temporary respite between outbursts of terror," said Netanyahu. And he stressed the central importance of security assurances for the Jewish state as part of any land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians.
"We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror. 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," Netanyahu said. Peace, he added, must "end the conflict between us once and for all."
Turning to Netanyahu, Abbas condemned Tuesday's attack by Hamas that killed four Israelis and Wednesday's strike in which two more were injured. "We do not want at all that any blood be shed... one drop of blood on the part of Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
Obama had earlier branded the first attack as "senseless slaughter" and warned it was an example of how opponents of the peace effort would try to halt progress.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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