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Arab League Offers Reprieve on Mideast Talks
Arab League ministers meeting in Libya walked a diplomatic tightrope on Friday, issuing a statement that put the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on notice but also giving American brokers another month to resolve an impasse over Israeli settlement construction and restart the talks.
This compromise, reached after intense American lobbying to avoid a total collapse of the talks, appeared to reflect the ambivalent attitude of the parties to the conflict. Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli leader seems willing to take significant political risks and immerse himself fully in the process, yet, pressed by an American administration that is so heavily invested in the process, neither wants to be seen as the one who walked away.
Efforts over the next four weeks will most likely continue to focus on the issue of extending an Israeli freeze on settlement construction, rather than the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants. On that score, the Arab League decision bought the sides another reprieve.
Ambassador Hesham Youssef, a senior aide to the secretary general of the Arab League, said Friday that the Arab ministers were supporting the Palestinian position “not to resume direct negotiations as long as settlement activities are ongoing.”
“This is an Arab and Palestinian position,” he said, speaking by telephone from Sirte, Libya, where the Arab League is meeting. “Not a single Arab country is saying go ahead with the talks.”
But he and other officials said that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had raised some additional options that he refused to discuss, but said that the Arab League would meet to discuss them in a month’s time.
“The month is for the different countries to discuss the different alternatives and give the opportunity for the Americans to perhaps succeed in extending the moratorium” on settlement building, Mr. Youssef said.
Israel’s 10-month moratorium on building new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank expired Sept. 26. There have been no direct peace talks since then.
The Obama administration has been trying to induce the Israelis to agree to a two-month extension, during which the Israelis and Palestinians could try to reach an agreement on borders and determine where the Israelis can and cannot build.
But deadlines have been met with the setting of new deadlines as the two sides play for time.
After Friday’s Arab League meeting, widely seen as another passed deadline, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera: “Negotiations are tied to halting settlement building. If Israel continues to build settlements then there will be no negotiations.”
However Mr. Erekat added that the issue did not end at that. “The issue has to do with an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem,” he said, perhaps hinting at guarantees the Palestinians are seeking from Washington.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, faces some tough opposition within his governing coalition and within his own right-leaning Likud Party to extending the moratorium, which his cabinet approved as a one-time gesture. Mr. Netanyahu argues that his Palestinian interlocutors wasted most of that time by refusing to enter into direct talks.
While the diplomatic acrobatics resulted in another deferment, a deadly encounter in the West Bank served as a reminder of the palpable challenges that Middle East peacemakers face.
Early Friday, hours before the Arab League meeting, Israeli forces killed two senior Hamas militants in the West Bank city of Hebron. Israel said they were responsible for an Aug. 31 shooting that killed four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman, all residents of a small Jewish settlement south of Hebron. That attack took place as the Israeli and Palestinian leaders met in Washington to begin the direct talks.
The Israeli military said that it had set out only to arrest the militants, and that it had detained at least a half-dozen other suspects.
The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that rivals Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, vowed to avenge the blood of the militants who were killed.
Isabel Kershner
The New York Times
(Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo)