US President Barack Obama was poised yesterday to launch a new US push for Middle East peace even as a flareup of Hamas violence and a deadlock over Israeli settlements loomed as potential deal-breakers.
Preparing to host a Washington summit to restart direct negotiations, Obama also faced the challenge of overcoming deep skepticism about his chances of succeeding where so many of predecessors have failed.
Hamas militants declared war on the talks even before they began, killing four Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, threatening more attacks and underscoring the formidable obstacles to ending the decades-old conflict.
Palestinian leaders committed to the peace process joined Israel and the US in condemning the attack and said the resumption of face-to-face Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, suspended for 20 months, would not be derailed.
“This kind of savage brutality has no place in any country under any circumstances,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington as she met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for evening talks.
Obama was to meet separately with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday before hosting them for dinner, the warmup for formal talks today brokered by Clinton.
The summit marks Obama’s riskiest plunge into Middle East diplomacy, not least because he is bringing the sides together to commit to forging a peace deal within 12 months. He is staking precious political capital on the peace drive in a US congressional election year.
There is also the danger that failure on the Israeli-Palestinian front could set back Obama’s already faltering outreach to the Muslim world as he seeks solidarity against Iran.
The Hamas attack cast a shadow over the summit’s opening, carrying a stark reminder that the Islamist group, which controls Gaza and opposes dialogue with Israel, remains a threat to peace moves by its moderate Palestinian brethren. It warned that Tuesday’s killings were just the first phase.
Netanyahu said he would insist in the talks with Abbas that security arrangements in any final peace deal would enable Israel “to confront this kind of terror and other threats.”
“We will not let terror decide where Israelis live or the configuration of our final borders. These and other issues will be determined in negotiations for peace that we are conducting,” Netanyahu said.
However, Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said: “We are not looking for excuses not to move forward. We want to move forward in peace, and we hope that no one else is looking for excuses.”
The four Israeli settlers, two men and two women, one pregnant, were shot dead after nightfall on a busy highway close to the West Bank city of Hebron.
The White House strongly condemned the attack and urged that it not be allowed to sabotage the negotiations.
Abbas, who also met Clinton ahead of the summit, condemned “any operation that targets civilians, Palestinians or Israelis.” Hamas calls Abbas, who governs only in the West Bank, a “traitor” for talking to Israel.
Still, many Israelis and Palestinians are deeply pessimistic.
Most analysts consider Obama’s one-year timeframe for completion of a final accord to be a long-shot, citing Israeli and Palestinian internal political divisions and the complexities of issues ranging from settlements to the fate of Jerusalem that have long defied solution.
However, Middle East envoy George Mitchell said the goal was realistic, telling reporters that both sides needed to seize the “window of opportunity.”
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