President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, met for three hours with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to start the indirect negotiations. In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said the talks would continue on Thursday. No details were released.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the meeting was “good and productive” but did not give details.
Mitchell will travel between Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem and the headquarters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, less than half an hour’s drive away.
But the positions of the two sides are worlds apart, and Mitchell’s shuttling would be considered a success if he managed no more than to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down at the same table — something they did for nearly two decades before the last round of talks ended in January 2009.
The two could not even agree about the technicality of whether the talks had begun. Israel labeled the Mitchell-Netanyahu meeting Wednesday as the beginning of the mediation, while Palestinians insisted they still had to give formal approval to the process over the weekend.
Earlier in the day, Abbas held consultations with Egyptian President Hosni. The meeting came two days after Netanyahu traveled to Egypt for talks with Mubarak.
Abbas and Mubarak discussed “preparing suitable conditions” for the indirect talks, the Egyptian official news agency MENA reported. Abbas on Tuesday expressed doubts about the planned launch of talks after a West Bank mosque went up in flames, for which he blamed Jewish settlers.
Meanwhile, a jailed Palestinian leader warned against more peace talks with Israel, saying a resumption of negotiations will not achieve Palestinian goals and deepen divisions among Palestinians.
Ahmed Saadat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said the Middle East conflict could only be resolved through the creation of a state shared by Palestinians and Jews — a position at odds with the “two-state solution” long sought by world powers.
