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WASHINGTON - Israeli and Palestinian leaders launched their first direct talks in 20 months Thursday, starting the clock on a daunting one-year deadline to flesh out a Palestinian state to live in peace with Israel.
After a day of weighty symbolism and lofty rhetoric at the White House, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
"I want to thank all of you for joining us today to relaunch negotiations," Clinton, who is hosting the talks, told the two leaders, praising them for their "courage and commitment."
"The decision to sit at this table was not easy. We understand the suspicion and skepticism that so many feel born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," Clinton said.
"But by being here today, you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change."
In an ornate room at the State Department, the leaders were to tackle core issues that have bedeviled decades of peace attempts -- Israel's security, the borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the fate of Jerusalem, claimed by both as their capital.
Netanyahu said at the start of the talks that peace was possible only with "painful concessions from both sides," and called on the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Clinton, Middle East envoy George Mitchell and other US officials were to work with Netanyahu, Abbas and their teams during an intense three hours of brass-tacks negotiations.
Clinton's spokesman Philip Crowley did not rule out the possibility that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders might huddle on their own.
Analysts expect the two sides to first tackle the less difficult issues of security and borders and skirt the thorny problems of refugees and Jerusalem, which cut to the heart of their identities as peoples living next to each other.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was at the White House to help mediate the talks, on Wednesday urged US President Barack Obama to throw the full weight of the United States behind the talks.
"What is really needed is for the United States to step in, remain committed, remain engaged and lend a helping hand to the two parties in order to help bridge the gaps in the positions, sort the differences," Mubarak's spokesman Soliman Awaad said.
Abbas and Netanyahu, with Mitchell acting as a go-between, have already broached some of the core issues during indirect "proximity" talks that began in May without any sign of progress.
Abbas had previously refused to enter direct negotiations without a full halt to Israeli settlement activity, but yielded under pressure from Obama.
But Abbas has warned that a renewal of settlement activities after September 26, when a 10-month partial moratorium expires, would end the negotiations. The settlements house about 500,000 people on lands occupied by Israel in 1967.
The Palestinians want to build a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is currently run by the militant Islamist Hamas movement, with east Jerusalem as its capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital.
Israeli and Palestinian forces meanwhile scoured the occupied West Bank for gunmen in the second attack on settlers claimed by Hamas, a staunch opponent of the negotiations, in as many days.
Despite the flare-up of violence, Obama urged both sides not to let slip a fleeting opportunity for peace, as he gathered the two leaders with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Mubarak at the White House on Wednesday.
"This moment of opportunity may not soon come again," said Obama, who met the leaders separately on Wednesday, and then hosted a dinner that also included Clinton and diplomatic Quartet representative Tony Blair.
The normally hawkish Netanyahu vowed to forge a "historic" peace with the Palestinians once and for all, calling Abbas his "partner in peace."
Abbas responded by calling for an end to bloodshed after the latest Hamas attacks, but also demanded a halt to Israel settlement activity.
The last direct peace negotiations ended in bloodshed in December 2008 when Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip to halt Hamas rocket fire on Israel.
- AFP/ir
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