Clinton Seeks to Prod Israelis, Palestinians on Talks
Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clintonhas returned to the Middle East in a bid to prod Israelis andPalestinians to the negotiating table five weeks after PresidentBarack Obama failed to kick-start peace talks.
Clinton arrived in Israel today for consultations withPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has resisted U.S.pressure to halt settlement construction in the West Bank as agesture toward peacemaking with the Palestinians. Her talks withthe Israeli leader follow her meeting in Abu Dhabi on thePersian Gulf with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The secretary’s trip is intended to encourage the two sidesto “narrow the gap” in their positions in order to get peacenegotiations restarted, said State Department spokesman P.J.Crowley. He said the U.S. “continues to talk to all of theparties to help them clarify what the details are” of possiblecompromise solutions.
The Mideast swing comes a week after Clinton told Obamathat it is premature to resume formal Israeli-Palestinian peacenegotiations. The Palestinians need to take more steps toprevent terror, and Israel needs to do more to improve the livesof the Palestinians, an official said Clinton told Obama.
Difficult Issues
“We are going to continue down this road and do everythingwe can to clear away whatever concerns that the parties have, toactually get them into negotiations where they then can thrashout all of these difficult issues,” Clinton said in aninterview with CNN before she left Pakistan.
Obama had ordered a review of the peace effort afterholding a three-way meeting with Abbas and Netanyahu Sept. 22 inNew York.
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu met yesterday with U.S. envoyGeorge Mitchell to prepare for the Clinton meeting and said hehoped the secretary of state would enable Israelis andPalestinians to restart peace talks “as soon as possible.”
Still, Clinton may be anticipating extended diplomacybefore the U.S. can show results. Abbas has said he won’t returnto the negotiating table until Netanyahu backs a settlementfreeze.
“President Abbas stressed that peace talks with Israelcan’t be resumed before it halts all settlement activities,”Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erakat said about themeeting with Clinton in an e-mailed statement today. Allsettlement actions, including what Israel terms as naturalgrowth, must stop before any peace negotiations can resume,Erekat said.
More Visits
“From the very beginning, the Obama administration set agoal of demonstrating progress in a Palestinian-Israeli peacetrack,” Gerald Steinberg, a Bar-Ilan University politicalscientist, said in a telephone interview. “If there can’t beprogress, there can at least be lots of effort, which means morevisits and more photo opportunities.”
Palestinians have been losing faith in Obama’s peacemakingability and in U.S. policies in the Mideast, according to asurvey released Oct. 18 by the Jerusalem Media & CommunicationsCenter. Slightly less than 24 percent of those questioned saidObama could boost chances of peace, down from 35.4 percent whoin June said they were optimistic about U.S. participation inthe Mideast effort, according to the poll.
Gesture From Netanyahu
“I don’t think that Abbas will go back to the tablewithout at least satisfying the issue of settlement expansion,”said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-AzharUniversity in the Gaza Strip. “There has to be some kind ofgesture from Netanyahu, even if it’s just temporary.”
Israelis and Palestinians are still fighting over the sameissues since peace talks began through the 1993 Oslo accords ata White House ceremony presided over by former President BillClinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband. The agenda includes thefuture of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and theborders of a future Palestinian state.
“I watched in the ‘90s as my husband just kept pushing andpushing and pushing and good things happened,” Hillary Clintonsaid in the CNN interview. “There wasn’t a final agreement butfewer people died, there were more opportunities for economicdevelopment, for trade, for exchanges. It had positive effects,even though it didn’t cross the finish line.”
Clinton’s stopover in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabicomes after Iran demanded changes to a United Nations-brokereddeal that would send Iranian enriched uranium to Russia forprocessing into nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor. TheIranian reaction cast doubts over wider talks to allaysuspicions Iran is seeking the means to build a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu praised the offer made to Iran, according to ane-mailed statement from his office. The proposal “is a positivefirst step,” Netanyahu told Mitchell yesterday in Jerusalem.
‘No Coincidence’
The United Arab Emirates, an oil-producing U.S. ally thathosts American military bases, is a trading partner for Iran,which ships three-quarters of its refined fuel imports throughEmirati ports. The U.S. Congress is considering legislationaimed at cutting off gasoline deliveries to Iran, which relieson imports to meet a third of its refined fuel needs.
Clinton also met with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed binZayed Al Nahyan during her visit. The crown prince, who is alsodeputy supreme commander of the U.A.E. armed forces, conferredwith Obama at the White House in September.
“Clinton’s trip is no coincidence,” said ChristopherDavidson, a Middle Eastern studies professor at DurhamUniversity in the U.K. “The U.A.E. has now become a majorelement in U.S. foreign policy because of Iran.”
Dubai, the second-largest of the seven emirates in theU.A.E. after Abu Dhabi, also is a destination for Iranianinvestment and maintains trade and financial links.
“Dubai is Iran’s main window to the global economy, andthe U.S. is likely to press the U.A.E. to control Dubai’srelations with Iran,” said Davidson, author of “Dubai: TheVulnerability of Success,” published last year.
Clinton plans to wind up her trip in Morocco for a Nov. 2-3forum involving Middle East countries.
To contact the reporters on this story:Indira Lakshmanan in Abu Dhabi at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Ferziger in Jerusalem at jferziger@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 31, 2009 13:30 EDTSource: Bloomberg
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