George Mitchell, the top US envoy to the Middle East, met with the Israeli prime minister on Friday in a bid to advance Washington’s increasingly daunting goal of reigniting negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.
The US emissary held talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s predominantly right-wing government, in Jerusalem. The prime minister’s office described the two-hour meeting as “constructive” and said that it focused on “steps for advancing the peace process.” Mr Mitchell and his aides are due to meet with a team of the premier’s representatives on Saturday to continue the talks.
Mr Mitchell is under pressure to show results on the US’s efforts to reignite peace talks ahead of a progress report that Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, is due to deliver to Barack Obama, US president, in mid-October.
The meeting with the Israeli leader comes one day after the country’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that there was no chance for reaching a peace agreement any time soon.
Nevertheless, Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, on Friday said that Mr Obama’s surprise winning of the Nobel peace prize will “strengthen” his ability to contribute to Middle East peace.
Prospects for a resumption of talks are also dimming amid the growing calls among Palestinians for the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the western-backed Palestinian Authority. Mr Abbas, viewed by the West as the best candidate to clinch a peace deal with Israel, is under fire at home after agreeing last week to defer action on a United Nations report alleging Israeli war crimes during the recent attacks in the Gaza Strip.
The criticism may also prompt a further delay of the reconciliation pact that Mr Abbas’s secular Fatah movement, dominant in the occupied West Bank, was due to sign with Hamas, an Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip after routing Fatah forces in 2007. The ceremony was expected to restore unity between Fatah and Hamas, whose rift is seen as a key impediment to peace efforts.
On Thursday, newswires reported that Hamas has asked Egypt, which is brokering the talks, to postpone the late-October summit in which the two factions were expected to seal the accord. However, it was unclear whether the meeting would be put off after Riad Malki, foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, told reporters after meeting in New York with Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, that an agreement was near.
Mr Malki said: “We hope it [reconciliation] will open a new chapter in the Palestinian movement. We are ready to sign [an agreement] whenever the document is ready.”
Mr Malki is to return to New York on October 14 for a Security Council debate that will include discussion of the controversial report. However, the prospects of council action is remote given US opposition to taking up the issue after declaring that the mandate of the UN mission that authored the report was one-sided.
