Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been given four months by Arab governments to try indirect peace negotiations with Israel, brokered by the US.
Arab League ambassadors meeting in Cairo on Wednesday gave their backing to so-called “proximity talks” in which US diplomats will shuttle between the two sides to find common ground and bridge gaps. Israel swiftly welcomed the decision.
Abbas’ Fatah movement is expected to endorse the idea this weekend, paving the way for the first negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis after an impasse of more than a year.
New talks will also be a second chance for US President Barack Obama, who has so far disappointed Arabs and others by failing to make good on his commitment to give a high priority to the Middle East peace process and by declining to press Israel to make prior concessions.
There is widespread skepticism, however, about the prospects for success. Israel has the most right-wing government in its history, while Palestinians are divided between Fatah, based in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, which is under siege and controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, which opposes negotiations with Israel.
Arab officials were not “convinced by Israeli intentions,” said the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, but “they decided to give an opportunity of four months to the American proposal.”
Diplomats say Abbas had been in two minds over whether to resume talks, but wanted to avoid being painted as the side refusing to negotiate — despite having failed to secure his demand for a full settlement freeze from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.
“Israel does not want to return to the negotiating table, but it wishes to blame the Palestinian side, saying that the Palestinians do not want to enter into negotiations,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said. “So we must put a stop to this pretext and reveal Israel’s true position before the international community and the American administration.”
Abbas broke off negotiations with Israel in protest at its Cast Lead offensive in the Gaza Strip launched in December 2008.
The effort will be overseen by George Mitchell, Obama’s Middle East envoy, who will need to establish the starting point for talks. Palestinians will want to go back to proposals submitted to Abbas by Ehud Olmert, the previous Israeli prime minister. Those included land swaps that would involve leaving most Israeli settlements in the West Bank, arrangements on Jerusalem and the symbolic return of some refugees. The Netanyahu government has refused to accept what had been agreed as a basis for further negotiation.
The Palestinian president has been under intense US pressure to open peace negotiations with Netanyahu, but until now had refused to do so unless Israel freezes all settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, originally demanded by Obama. Israel has only accepted a partial halt on construction for 10 months and has excluded East Jerusalem. The Arab position is that the Palestinians should try proximity talks for four months and then go back to the UN.
In a further sign of the quickening pace of peace process activity, the UN announced that the quartet of Middle East negotiators — the US, the UN, the EU and Russia — is to convene at ministerial level in Moscow later this month.
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