Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reconvened US-brokered peace talks in Jerusalem yesterday amid little fanfare and low expectations, dogged by plans for more Jewish settler homes on occupied land.<\/p>\n
The resumption of negotiations, after a first round in Washington last month that ended a three-year stand-off over Jewish settlement building, followed Palestinian celebrations overnight as Israel released 26 of their jailed brethren.<\/p>\n
Optimism was in short supply before the two sides\u2019 first official meeting in Jerusalem in nearly five years, with the session expected to focus on setting an agenda for the talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael will resort to feints and evasion and put up impossible demands in order to say that these negotiations are fruitless and to continue its policy of stealing land as it has done until this moment,\u201d said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official tasked by President Mahmoud Abbas to comment on the talks.<\/p>\n
Israel has published plans for 3,100 new settler homes in recent days, drawing US and other international concern and deepening Palestinian distrust.<\/p>\n
Tzipi Livni, Israel\u2019s chief peace negotiator and justice minister, said on her Facebook page before the teams met: \u201cToday, I will continue the important mission I began \u2014 to achieve a peace agreement that will keep the country Jewish and democratic and provide security … for Israel and its citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoping to avoid any public wrangling in the talks on peace and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, officials have said few details would be released.<\/p>\n
Israeli cabinet minister Yaakov Peri said a \u201clong and exhausting trek\u201d lay ahead. US Secretary of State John Kerry has set a goal of nine months for an agreement to be reached.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth for the Palestinians and for us, the hourglass is running out. We will not have many more opportunities to resolve this dispute,\u201d Peri told Army Radio.<\/p>\n
PRISONER RELEASE<\/p>\n
In the small hours of Wednesday, Israel freed the 26 Palestinians jailed between 1985 and 2001, many for deadly attacks on Israelis. Their release, coupled with Abbas\u2019s dropping of a demand for a settlement freeze before talks could begin, helped to pave the way towards negotiations.<\/p>\n
Joyous crowds, fireworks and V-for-Victory signs greeted the former prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The scenes did little to boost optimism in Israel about prospects for peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that today is a sad day to start negotiating about peace with people who accepted murderers as heroes,\u201d said Erez Goldman, an Israeli resident of Jerusalem. \u201cI cannot see that anyway these peace negotiations are going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few on either side see swift resolution to longstanding problems such as borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.<\/p>\n
Yet neither Abbas nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to attract blame for putting the brakes on US attempts at peace, a product of Kerry\u2019s intensive shuttle diplomacy. Negotiations are set to continue every few weeks in venues including Jericho in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n
Israel says it supports Kerry\u2019s nine-month timeline but in the past few days has rattled world powers by announcing its plans to increase its settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in Brazil on Tuesday, Kerry said he had a \u201cvery frank and open, direct discussion\u201d in a phone call with Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
Kerry appeared to associate the new settlement announcements with internal Israeli politics, saying \u201cthere are realities of life in Israel that have to be taken into account here\u201d.<\/p>\n
Such construction helps to mollify pro-settler factions in Netanyahu\u2019s rightist coalition government, one of which, the Jewish Home party, opposes Palestinian statehood and tried unsuccessfully to vote down the prisoner release.<\/p>\n
Source:Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reconvened US-brokered peace talks in Jerusalem yesterday amid little fanfare and low expectations, dogged by plans for more Jewish settler homes on occupied land.<\/p>\n
The resumption of negotiations, after a first round in Washington last month that ended a three-year stand-off over Jewish settlement building, followed Palestinian celebrations overnight as Israel released 26 of their jailed brethren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main_slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}