Hopeful Start to Mideast Peace Talk

President Barack Obama set off on a new round of Mideast peace talks Wednesday with a pledge that violence in the West Bank would not deter the American, Israeli and Palestinian leaders from pushing ahead with an agreement.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, Obama said “extremists and rejectionists” would try to undermine the talks with attacks like the one Tuesday in which a Palestinian gunman killed four Israelis in Hebron. He said it was “an example of what we’re up against.”

“The United States is going to be unwavering in its support of Israel's security, and we are going to push back against these kinds of terrorist activities,” Obama said at the White House after meeting privately with Netanyahu. “The message should go out to Hamas and everybody else who is taking credit for these heinous crimes that this will not stop us from not only ensuring a secure Israel, but also securing a longer-lasting peace in which people throughout the region can take a different course."

Netanyahu then stepped to the microphone, thanking Obama for the “sentiment of decent people everywhere, in the face of this savagery and brutality.”

“Four innocent people were gunned down and seven new orphans were added, by people who have no respect for human life and trample human rights into the dust and butcher everything that they oppose,” the Israeli leader said of the attack.

“I think that the president’s statement is an expression of our desire to fight against this terror. And the talks that we had, which were, indeed, open, productive, serious in the quest for peace, also centered around the need to have security arrangements that are able to roll back this kind of terror and other threats to Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said.

Obama praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for condemning the attack — a statement that drew a nod of approval from Netanyahu — and he expressed confidence in the prospects of reaching a “two-state solution” with Israel and the Palestinians.

“We’re going to remain stalwart,” Obama said.

The statements by Obama and Netanyahu marked the start of the White House’s effort to turn attention from the Iraq war to the peace negotiations. Obama will hold a series of meetings and host a White House dinner with leaders from the region to kick off the first direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in more than 18 months.

Obama will also meet Wednesday with Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and then host at a dinner at the White House the leaders and former U.K. Prime Minister and Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair.

Photographers captured photos of Obama and Netanyahu talking quietly in the Oval Office ahead of the meeting. The Obama-Netanyahu statement was added to the schedule late. It’s unclear whether the Israeli leader will be the only one to make a solo statement with Obama.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosts the direct talks between Netanyahu and Abbas and their negotiating teams at the State Department.


But the talks come at a perilous time — a fact underscored by Tuesday’s shooting by Hamas in the West Bank — and analysts are now wary of any big, sweeping moves.

“These talks aren't quite ready for prime time yet, and everyone should be slow-walking the process,” former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said. “If they get more ambitious now, it will collapse.”

“What counts are only three things this round,” Miller said. “One, that the Israelis and Americans work out (or toward) an agreement on a moratorium on settlements; two, that Benjamin Netanyahu, even while he pushes security, shows some movement in the Palestinian direction on one other issue — borders; three, that the Palestinians hang in there and not bolt the talks because they believe they're the key to an empty room.”

At a meeting Tuesday night at the Mayflower Hotel, where the Israeli delegation is staying, Clinton and Netanyahu condemned the shooting earlier that day near the West Bank city of Hebron. But Clinton said the attack demonstrates that Netanyahu is right to move forward with peace negotiations with a Palestinian Authority that rejects Hamas’s terrorist tactics in favor of peace.

“The forces of terror and destruction cannot be allowed to continue,” Clinton said. “It is one of the reasons why the prime minister is here today: to engage in direct negotiations with those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace.”

Obama administration officials have indicated they envision a one-year process for the negotiations to achieve the framework agreement for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an agreement that then would be implemented over several years.

Noting that it was Netanyahu who publicly said in July that he thought the parties could get an agreement within a year, Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell told journalists Tuesday that the ambitious deadline suited Abbas and the administration as well.

“People ask whether the long history of negotiation has been beneficial or harmful. It’s actually been both, in some respects,” Mitchell said, adding that it’s been beneficial in that people understand what the “principal issues are and how they might be resolved; harmful in the sense that it’s created” cynicism in the region about “a never-ending process, that it’s gone on for a very long time and will go on forever.”

“So it’s very important to create a sense that this has a definite concluding point,” Mitchell said. “And we believe that it can be done, and we will do everything possible, with perseverance and patience and determination, to see that it is done.”

Mitchell also said that he supports Netanyahu’s idea to meet with Abbas every two weeks in the region going forward, after the direct talks begin.

“We think that’s a sensible approach, which we hope is undertaken and that, in addition to that, there will be meetings at other levels on a consistent basis,” Mitchell said.

Washington Middle East experts who have consulted with the administration this week say it is keeping its cards close to its vest on the specifics and does not seem to have many details worked out — nor a Plan B should talks run aground.

Of most immediate concern is the fact that a 10-month partial moratorium on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank is due to expire Sept. 26. Sources said that Netanyahu adviser Dan Meridor has proposed a “compromise” under which after Sept. 26, some construction could resume in some settlement blocs that many Israelis feel would go to Israel in a final peace agreement, swapped in exchange for other land given to the Palestinians. But the administration is not satisfied with the Meridor compromise plan, sources said.

The administration is frustrated, the sources said, that Abbas keeps publicly insisting on an absolute freeze and positions that may limit his own flexibility in the talks.

“I get a pretty strong sense of exasperation from the administration folks that Abbas keeps climbing up the tree himself,” one Middle East expert in close consultation with the administration said Tuesday. “This time, he is the one putting demands on a moratorium.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, himself a former Labor Party prime minister serving in Netanyahu’s right-wing government, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz in an interview published Wednesday that Israel would be willing to cede parts of East Jerusalem to a future Palestinian state — a position Netanyahu has never publicly embraced.

"West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours,” Barak told the newspaper. “The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter-million Palestinians live will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed-upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David."