US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to head for Israel and the Palestinian territories yesterday in another bid to push the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process forward.
Rice “will travel to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Aug. 24,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.
McCormack said Rice’s talks would include senior Israeli and Palestinian officials and would cover “ongoing efforts to create positive and lasting peace in the region and progress towards the shared goal of a peace agreement in 2008.”
PHOTO: AFP
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said on Aug. 17 that Rice would meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, then hold three-way talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and senior Palestinian diplomat Ahmed Qorei.
The two sides formally relaunched the peace process after a seven-year hiatus at a US conference in November, with the goal of signing a full peace deal by the time US President George W. Bush leaves office in January.
The talks have made little visible progress since then, with both sides remaining deeply divided on core issues like the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and final borders.
Rice was last in Israel in mid-June, when she strongly criticized the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they undermined the peace process.
She has already visited the region 17 times in the past two years.
Coinciding with the secretary’s trip will be a meeting in Cairo of leading Palestinian factions that will send envoys to Egypt for talks aimed at ending months of bitter infighting.
Nafid Azzam, a senior leader in Islamic Jihad, said his movement would send delegations to Cairo for talks aimed at reconciliation between the Fatah movement and their Hamas rival.
The two main Palestinian factions have been bitterly divided since June of last year, when Hamas seized power in Gaza after routing forces loyal to Abbas, the head of Fatah, in a week of bloody street battles.
Spokesmen for two smaller groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), also said they would send envoys to Egypt next week.
Egypt was expected to hold separate talks with each group over the course of the week, but it was not immediately clear when or whether Hamas or Fatah would send their delegations to Cairo.
Prior to the announcement of Rice’s latest mission, Livni played down the likelihood of meeting the stated US goal of getting a peace deal this year and warned that rushing negotiations could backfire.
“There is some kind of expectation of doing something before the end of the year,” Livni said at a news conference with foreign journalists.
“I believe that the timeline is important, but what is more important is the content and the nature of the understanding that we can reach with the Palestinians,” she said.
Livni went on to warn that “premature” efforts to “bridge gaps” between the two sides could lead to “clashes.”
“This can lead to misunderstandings, this can lead to violence,” she said.
“Until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed,” she said.
Meanwhile, security forces raided the offices of the Islamic Movement in the northern Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm early yesterday and accused it of aiding the Palestinian Hamas movement, police said.
Dozens of police and internal intelligence agents took part in the raid on the offices of the al-Aqsa institution, which is operated by the Israeli Arab Islamist party, a police official said.
Officers confiscated documents, computers and a safe with hundreds of thousands of shekels in the operation which was ordered by the defense ministry, the official added.
Israeli security forces accuse the office of funneling funds to the Hadawa organization in east Jerusalem, which is operated by Hamas.
The Islamic Movement condemned the operation in a statement, saying that the “Israeli establishment went bankrupt, having no answer to the solid and strong information on the al-Aqsa institution’s activities in regards to the damage caused to the holy sites in general and to the al-Aqsa Mosque in particular.”
The al-Aqsa institution claims to defend the mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City — considered the third holiest site in Islam — from nearby construction projects and other actions it views as threats to the site.
Tens of thousands of people attended an Islamic Movement rally on Friday in which it warned of the dangers posed to the monument, which is built on Judaism’s holiest site and has been a major regional flashpoint.
In its statement the movement accused Israel of choosing “to use the stick method instead of talking and convincing.”
Founded in 1970, the movement has two members in the Israeli parliament. It includes a more radical wing led by the firebrand cleric Sheikh Raed Salah and a moderate wing led by its founder, Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish.
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