JERUSALEM: The United States and Israel ended another round of talks on Wednesday with no sign yet of a deal on a West Bank settlement freeze, but a US envoy planned to meet again with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.
The decision to extend discussions kept open the possibility of a meeting next week involving Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who all plan to attend a United Nations General Assembly meeting.
Failure to arrange at least an informal encounter between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be a setback for Obama, who has been trying to wring a settlement housing construction freeze from Netanyahu and restart peace talks.
Diplomats and officials in the Israeli and Palestinian camps said some form of trilateral meeting in New York seemed likely, and it might indeed signal a resumption of some form of “peace process” but not any resolution of key disputes. “There’ll probably be some kind of handshake because this is what Obama wants,” one Israeli official said. “But it’s not going anywhere longer term,” he added, citing Abbas’s internal opposition from Islamists and Netanyahu’s pro-settler allies.
Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, who had held separate meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas on Tuesday, saw the Israeli leader again for two hours in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
A photo opportunity at the start of the meeting appeared to speak volumes. After a stiff handshake for the media, Netanyahu turned his back on Mitchell with scarcely a word and strode into his office, leaving Obama’s envoy to follow behind.
Mitchell has been trying to work out a deal with a defiant Netanyahu, who has resisted Obama’s call to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, in the most serious rift in US-Israeli relations in a decade.
