US envoy seeks Mideast talks deal, tension rises

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s  Middle East envoy began a round of meetings yesterday aimed at  relaunching negotiations, while the Palestinian leader said he  feared the 20-year-old peace process with Israel was close to  collapse.   George Mitchell, the US mediator, met Israeli Defence  Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv, an Israeli spokesman said. In  keeping with Mitchell’s low-key style, he made no public  comment.

He was to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today  and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a day later. Officials  expect discussion on formats for the four months of “proximity  talks” to which Abbas agreed last week after a year of demanding  Israel end settlement building before negotiations could resume.

Though violence is low compared to the bloodshed in the  early part of the last decade, tensions are rising over land and  holy sites around Jerusalem and the West Bank since Netanyahu  came to power at the head of a right-led coalition a year ago,  adding urgency to US and European pressure for peace talks.

Clashes on Friday between Palestinians and Israeli forces at  Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque drew a call for restraint  all round from the UN Security Council and an accusation from  Abbas that Israeli “provocation” aimed to wreck peace moves and  risked sparking a “war of religion” across the Middle East.

Abbas, who won backing on Saturday from his Fatah party’s  Central Committee for the return to talks, accused Netanyahu of  intransigence on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory  that, he said, had brought the peace process close to collapse.

“The peace process has almost reached a dead end,” he said  in a speech in Ramallah, citing Netanyahu’s refusal to stand by  compromise offers made by his predecessor before Abbas broke off  prior negotiations in late 2008 over Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Despite a temporary, partial freeze on building in the West  Bank, the expansion of Jewish settlements on land occupied since  1967, as well as an Israeli heritage plan announced last month  to include West Bank religious sites “threaten … to open the  door to a dark future that awaits us all,” he said.
“The Israeli government continues to procrastinate to gain  time and strengthen its control of the occupied territories to  prevent any realistic possibility of establishing an  independent, viable … state of Palestine,” Abbas added.

Netanyahu’s government has said it is willing to discuss any  issue with Abbas but has made clear that, particularly given the  strength of Abbas’s rivals in the hardline, Islamist Hamas  movement which controls the Gaza Strip and is popular elsewhere,  an early deal delivering a Palestinian state is unlikely.

The prime minister has also dismissed calls for Israel to  give up control of all Jerusalem and allow the east of the city,  captured in 1967, to be the capital of such a Palestinian state.

A demonstration against Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem  by several thousand Palestinians and Israeli peace activists  passed off peacefully last night. Trouble had been feared  with settlers who claim a religious right to all of the city.

In the West Bank, relatives buried six members of a single  Palestinian family who were killed when their car collided with  an Israeli military vehicle on Friday. Reflecting popular anger,  officials from Fatah said the soldiers were to blame.

Sources on both sides have said they expect Mitchell to  secure agreement on a format of talks between negotiators to  begin possibly in Washington or elsewhere abroad fairly soon.