WASHINGTON-Reaching “reasonable compromises” between Israelis and Palestinians in peace talks will be difficult, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, while “the consequences of not trying could be worse.”
After months of Kerry’s prodding, negotiators from the two sides sat down with him over dinner at the State Department in Washington on Monday night, two decades after Israelis and Palestinians signed their historic first accord and three years after negotiations last broke down.
Kerry spoke for about 45 minutes with representatives from the Israeli negotiating team and then another roughly 45 minutes with the Palestinian side before sitting down for dinner on the top floor of the State Department.
“Not very much to talk about at all,” Kerry joked just before starting dinner shortly after 8 p.m. CDT.
“Many difficult choices lie ahead for the negotiators and for the leaders as we seek reasonable compromises on tough, complicated, emotional and symbolic issues,” Kerry said earlier Monday at the State Department, where he named veteran diplomat Martin Indyk as special envoy forthe talks. “I think reasonable compromises has to be a keystone of all of this effort.”
Kerry is seeking to move beyond a legacy of inconclusive past U.S. efforts, the lull in direct peace talks and little public attention to the issue by President Barack Obama during his first term.
“It’s unclear what private assurances he’s gotten, or what strategy he has to blow this rather modest spark into a flame,” Jon Alterman, who heads the Mideast program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said today in an emailed comment. “In the current environment, Israeli and Palestinian publics both say they support peace, but neither thinks it is remotely possible to get a deal from the other side.”
In a statement Monday, Obama said that “the most difficult work of these negotiations is ahead.”
“I am hopeful that both the Israelis and Palestinians will approach these talks in good faith and with sustained focus and determination,” Obama said. “The United States stands ready to support them throughout these negotiations, with the goal of achieving two states, living side by side in peace and security.”
Indyk “brings unique experience and insight to this role, which will allow him to contribute immediately as the parties begin down the tough, but necessary, path of negotiations,” Obama said.
Kerry announced Monday that Indyk, 62, who twice served as ambassador to Israel during President Bill Clinton’s administration, will be the special Mideast envoy handling the talks. His deputy will be Frank Lowenstein, a Kerry adviser who was chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Kerry was chairman.
In naming Indyk, currently vice president and director of foreign policy at the policy research center Brookings Institution in Washington, Kerry chose an experienced Mideast diplomat who has dealt with Palestinian leaders as well as the last seven Israeli prime ministers.
During the Bill Clinton administration, Indyk became the first Jewish U.S. ambassador to Israel, serving from 1995 to 1997. He served a second term there from 2000 to 2001, playing a key role in the administration’s multiple, unsuccessful attempts to broker peace deals between Israel and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians, and had stints on the White House National Security Council staff and as assistant secretary ofstate for Near East affairs.
He gave up his Australian citizenship to become a U.S.
citizen in 1993 and join the Clinton administration. Before his government posts, he was the founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and was deputy research director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.
Indyk has “spent most of his professional life on this issue,” so “neither side will be able to outmaneuver” him, said David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute’s Project on the Middle East Peace Process.
Indyk “knows what has worked, and he knows what hasn’t worked, and he knows how important it is to get this right,” Kerry said. “Ambassador Indyk is realistic. He understands that Israeli-Palestinian peace will not come easily, and it will not happen overnight.
“But he also understands that there is now a path forward, and we must follow that path with urgency. He understands that to ensure that lives are not needlessly lost, we have to ensure that opportunities are not needlessly lost.”
Indyk, who will take a leave of absence from his current job, thanked Obama and Kerry for “entrusting me with the mission of helping you take this breakthrough and turn it into a full-fledged Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.”
“It is a daunting and humbling challenge, but one that I cannot desist from,” Indyk said.
Indyk replaces David Hale, who had served as a place holder in the post until last month. Hale had succeeded former Sen. George Mitchell as the Obama administration’s first special Mideast envoy.Mitchell resigned in 2011 after two years of fruitless and frustrating attempts to engage the Israelis and Palestinians in serious negotiations.
After Kerry’s dinner Monday night with top representatives of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, talks are to continue today.
The initial meetings “will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months,” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokesman, said Sunday. Kerry hammered out the terms of negotiations in months of intense shuttle diplomacy. The terms haven’t been disclosed.
“We want to establish a Palestinian state beside the state of Israel, living in peace and friendship and bringing an end to the conflict,” Israeli President Shimon Peres said Monday on a visit to the Latvian capital of Riga.
The peace effort will last nine months, Netanyahu said. His Cabinet cleared the way to resumption of talks when it voted Sunday to approve the release 104 Palestinian prisoners, a step Abbas has long sought.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who will lead her country’s negotiating team, and fellow Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho met with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon in New York on Monday before heading to Washington.
“We are hopeful,” Livni told reporters afterward. “We believe that this is of mutual interest for Israel, for the Palestinians, the Arab world, the international community.”
Ban expressed “his strong support for the resumption of credible negotiations to achieve the two-state solution,” U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed Israel’s agreement to release prisoners, while saying thousands more remain in Israeli jails and must be freed.
“We call upon Israel to seize the opportunity” Kerry has created “in order to put an end to decades of occupation and exile, and to start a new stage of justice, freedom and peace for Israel, Palestine and the rest of the region,” Erekat said.
The Israeli and Palestinian negotiators also have been part of previous failed attempts to broker peace between the nations, but Psaki, the State Department spokesman, said, “It sounds like we’re lucky to have decades of experience ready to come back to the table and make an effort to push forward.”
Negotiations are resuming almost 20 years after Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo peace accords in a White House ceremony, buoying Palestinians’ hopes of winning an independent state on land Israel captured in 1967. Instead, talks have proceeded in fits and starts, and thousands of people have been killed in periodic waves of violence. The plan to give Palestinians partial sovereignty for five years has lasted for two decades.
In the meantime, the Palestinians have ruptured into dueling entities, one governed by the West Bank-based Abbas, the other by Islamist Hamas militants in Gaza, who do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel and the U.S. shun Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas won’t take part in the talks, which it has denounced.
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian spokesman, said the talks are being held under more difficult conditions than previous negotiations, citing the Palestinian political split as well as Netanyahu’s more hawkish positions compared to his predecessor.
“But I think there is a recognition of the urgency,” she said. “If we don’t move fast and decisively, things could fall apart.”
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has been a priority for Kerry, who has made six trips to the region in as many months. He called Abbas over the weekend to emphasize Obama’s support for a prompt return to negotiations, the Palestinian Wafa news agency said.
Netanyahu swept away the last hurdle Sunday when he overcame opposition within his Cabinet to the release of jailed Palestinians.
“This moment isn’t easy for me, it’s not easy for the Cabinet, and it is especially not easy for the grieving families,” Netanyahu said in a text message after the 13-7 vote, with two abstentions. “But there are times when one must make difficult decisions for the good of the country and this is one of those moments.”
In a rare open message to Israeli citizens before the vote, Netanyahu said upheaval in Egypt, Syria and Iran confront Israel with both challenges and “considerable opportunities.”
Peace talks broke down in September 2010 when Netanyahu declined to extend a partial settlement-construction freeze in the West Bank. Abbas refused to negotiate unless the building was halted, saying it was designed to entrench Israel’s presence there and was a sign of bad faith. Netanyahu said talks shouldn’t be subject to conditions.
Palestinian officials reiterated Monday that they received U.S. assurances that Washington considers the 1967 lines the basis for border talks. A senior Abbas aide acknowledged, however, that Israel has not signed on to that principle.
Senior Israeli officials also have reiterated in recent days that settlement construction will continue.
Information for this article was contributed by Terry Atlas, Peter S. Green, Aaron Eglitis, Nicole Gaouette, Roger Runningen, Calev Ben-David, Gwen Ackerman and Sangwon Yoon of Bloomberg News; by Matthew Lee, Ian Deitch, Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/30/2013