US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Thursday with no visible sign of progress on breaking a deadlock over building in West Bank settlements.
The Palestinians reiterated a threat to leave the nascent negotiations if settlement construction were to resume when a moratorium expires on Sept. 30, and Israel reaffirmed it would not extend the freeze, even for a limited period.
On another possible peace track, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and said Washington’s focus on an Israeli-Palestinian deal would not deflect it from pushing for an Israeli-Syrian accord.
PHOTO: AFP
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 television, Clinton said it would be “extremely useful” if Israel agreed to a limited extension of the 10-month, partial settlement freeze.
However, officials close to the talks said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected a proposal to extend the moratorium by three months.
At a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki restated the Palestinian threat to leave the negotiations “if one settlement is built after the end of the freeze.”
Wrapping up a round of negotiations that began in Egypt on Tuesday, Clinton held talks in Jordan with King Abdullah after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“Today, His Majesty and I discussed ongoing negotiations and I expressed my confidence that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas can make the difficult decisions necessary to resolve all of the core issues within one year,” she told a news conference in Amman.
Those issues include the borders of a Palestinian state and the future of settlements, Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told Israel’s Channel 1 TV he had raised the idea with Netanyahu to keep the moratorium in place for another three months, hoping to buy time for negotiators to agree on the borders of a Palestinian state.
Israel has said such a deal could entail a land swap under which it would keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank, territory it captured from Jordan in a 1967 Middle East war.
Officials close to the talks said the US, which launched the face-to-face negotiations in Washington on Sept. 2 after a 20-month hiatus, had made a similar proposal. US officials declined to comment.
In Damascus, Mitchell, who had accompanied Clinton to the region, told reporters: “Our effort to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in no way contradicts or conflicts with our goal of a comprehensive peace including peace between Israel and Syria.”
Israel and Syria last held direct peace talks in the US in 2000, but failed to reach agreement on the future of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured by Israeli forces in 1967 and which Damascus wants back.
Four rounds of indirect talks that were mediated by Turkey broke down in 2008. Syria plays host to exiled leaders of the Hamas Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip and opposes Abbas’s peace efforts.
Focusing on the US drive to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace, Clinton said in an interview with ABC News in Jerusalem that hard work was under way “to make sure there remains a conducive atmosphere to constructive talks.”
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were due to meet next week and set a new date for leaders to convene.
In a statement, Netanyahu’s bureau said he was standing by his position not to extend the moratorium. He has said, however, he intends to limit the scope of future settlement construction.
In other news, the Israeli military said troops had killed a wanted Hamas member in a West Bank raid.
The military said soldiers were trying to arrest Iyad Abu Shilbaya early yesterday in the town of Tulkarem when he ran at them, ignoring orders to halt. The military said troops feared he had a weapon and shot him.
The man’s brother, Moetasim Abu Shilbaya, said troops burst into his house and killed him in his bedroom. He said his brother was a Hamas political activist, not an armed militant.
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