JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s peace envoy sought yesterday an “early relaunch” of Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel’s foreign minister said Washington’s goal of comprehensive peace was an illusion.
With wider Muslim-Jewish tension brewing over access to holy sites in Jerusalem, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas struggling for credibility and Islamist Hamas ascendant in Gaza, omens for U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s trip were not good.
“We are determined, persevering, and we recognize the complexities and the difficulties,” he told reporters before talks with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.
“We remain committed and confident that ultimately the goal of comprehensive peace will be achieved.”
Resuming talks suspended 10 months ago was essential for a comprehensive regional treaty involving Israel and neighbors that include Syria and Lebanon. Obama believes “there is no alternative” if the region wants peace, Mitchell said.
Desultory peace talks were derailed by the Gaza war. Obama has made their resumption a priority, and last month arranged a meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, but with scant results.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced before meeting Mitchell earlier yesterday that he would tell the envoy there was no chance of a peace deal for many years.
“There are many conflicts in the world that haven’t reached a comprehensive solution and people learned to live with it,” Lieberman, a hawk in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-leaning coalition government, told Israel Radio.
“Whoever says that it’s possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement … simply doesn’t understand the reality,” Lieberman said. “He’s spreading illusions and in the end brings disappointment.”
But the centre-left Barak took a different tack, telling Mitchell that “the time had come to move determinately forward” and that comprehensive peace in the Middle East was not a “zero-sum game” but a “win-win” situation for all the parties.
U.S. officials said Mitchell, who meets Abbas and Netanyahu today, was back with a sense of urgency but no expectation of a breakthrough.
Since his appointment in January, Mitchell has visited Israel and the West Bank nine times. The missions have been stymied by Netanyahu’s refusal to halt settlement construction and by Arab states’ reluctance to make peace overtures.
The Palestinians say Mitchell must realise that Lieberman has made it clear why “there will be no relaunch of negotiations any time soon,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters from Rome, where Abbas was on an official visit.
