The senior Israeli official said that for now, Netanyahu is set to fly to New York late on Wednesday and deliver a speech the following day. If a trilateral session were to be arranged, the prime minister could leave for the US earlier, the official said, adding that a Netanyahu-Obama meeting was not on the agenda.
Abbas, meanwhile, is conflicted about whether to meet with Netanyahu as a courtesy to Obama, said senior Palestinian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the deliberations.
Several senior aides urged Abbas not to sit down with Netanyahu without having set the terms for negotiations, arguing that otherwise it would be seen as a sign of weakness and hurt his standing at home.
<<< Abbas is locked in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which overran the Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving him only in control of the West Bank. Hamas has used lack of progress in negotiations to try to discredit Abbas. In the Gaza town of Beit Lahia, Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri told a rally Friday that negotiations are a waste of time. “The choice of negotiations has proven a failure, and it’s time that Palestinian negotiators abandon this worthless and destructive tool and go back to holy war and resistance,” al-Masri told a crowd. In other developments, the World Bank warned in a report Friday that donor countries will have to keep giving large amounts of aid to the Abbas government, unless Israel eases access of Palestinian goods to Israeli and world markets. Senior representatives of the donor countries meet next week as part of the General Assembly and review their aid program to the Palestinians. Donor countries have given billions of dollars to the Palestinians since 1993, including $1.8 billion in 2008 and an expected $1.1 billion in 2009. However, the economy has been held back by Israeli restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement, imposed after the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2000. In recent months, Israel has eased some restrictions inside the West Bank, prompting modest economic growth. However, the West Bank and Gaza remain cut off from each other, and West Bank exports are hampered by slow movement at Israeli crossings. The Abbas government is still short of money, the bank said, citing a $400 million financing gap for this year. AP-TK-18-09-09 1748GMT
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