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Israelis and Palestinians to Resume Peace Talks Israel and Palestinians Set to Resume Peace Talks, U.S. Announces
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will resume peace talks here on Monday night, the State Department said in a statement on Sunday afternoon, the first time that the two have held direct talks since 2010. WASHINGTON — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will resume peace talks here on Monday night, the State Department said in a statement on Sunday afternoon. It will be the first time that the two have held direct talks since 2010.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Sunday with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to formally invite them to send their negotiating teams to Washington. Clearing the last obstacle to resuming peace talks, the Israeli cabinet voted Sunday to approve the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners, an unpopular move with many Israelis.
“Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point,” said the statement from Mr. Kerry, who has worked intensively to revive the moribund talks, including six trips to the Middle East since he was appointed. “We are grateful for their leadership.” Secretary of State John Kerry then spoke with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to formally invite them to send their negotiating teams to Washington. “Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “We are grateful for their leadership.”
The first meeting is planned for Monday evening, and negotiators are also planning to meet on Tuesday. The goal of the negotiations will be to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel with agreed-upon borders and security arrangements.
The Israeli side will be represented by Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, and Isaac Molho. Saeb Erekat and Mohammed Shtayyeh will represent the Palestinian side. Officials said that talks are initially expected to focus on procedural issues, like the location, schedule and format of negotiating sessions, before moving on to tackle the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The initial meetings will focus on developing a “procedural work plan” on how to conduct the talks in the coming months, the statement said. The Israeli side will be represented by Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, and Isaac Molho, Mr. Netanyahu’s special envoy. On the Palestinian side will be Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator, and Mohammed Shtayyeh, a close adviser to Mr. Abbas.
Mr. Netanyahu worked over the weekend to convince Israelis that a resumption of the peace process was vital to the country’s interest. The Monday evening session will be a working dinner at the State Department, hosted by Mr. Kerry, who has made an intensive effort to revive the moribund talks. The Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams are to meet again on Tuesday before heading home.
The last obstacle to resuming peace talks was cleared earlier on Sunday when the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners. The next round of talks would be held in the Middle East. Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, whom Mr. Kerry is expected to name on Monday to manage the talks for the United States, would attend that round.
The prisoner release is unpopular with many Israelis, but one insisted upon by the Palestinian leadership. After 20 years of an on-again-off-again peace process, agreement on the thorniest issues, like the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem, have eluded even the most seasoned negotiators.
The prisoners, most of whom have served at least 20 years for deadly attacks on Israelis, are to be released in batches depending upon progress in the talks. Mr. Netanyahu will lead a team of five ministers who will oversee the release. He deferred any decision on whether Arab citizens of Israel would be among the prisoners released, a longstanding point of dispute, saying that would be brought to another cabinet vote. Mr. Netanyahu worked over the weekend to convince Israelis that a resumption of the peace process was a vital Israeli interest and that a prisoner release was the least damaging concession he could make.
A Palestinan official involved in the negotiations process, who could speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said earlier that the first group was expected to be released in August, and the rest within six months. After six hours of deliberations on Sunday, 13 ministers voted in favor of the release, 7 opposed it and 2 abstained.
“This moment is not easy for me,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office. “It is not easy for the ministers. It is not easy especially for the families, the bereaved families, whose heart I understand. But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the country, and this is one of those moments.” The prisoners, most of whom have served at least 20 years for deadly attacks on Israelis, are to be freed in groups. The pace of the releases will depend on progress in the talks.
Mr. Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, described the decision in a statement as “an overdue step toward the implementation of the Sharm el-Sheik agreement of 1999.” “This moment is not easy for me. It is not easy for the ministers. It is not easy especially for the families, the bereaved families, whose heart I understand,” Mr. Netanyahu said in televised remarks at the meeting. “But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the country, and this is one of those moments.”
“We welcome this decision, 14 years later,” he said. Mr. Erekat described the decision in a statement as “an overdue step toward the implementation of the Sharm el-Sheik agreement of 1999.” He added, “We welcome this decision, 14 years later.”
As the cabinet meeting got under way, scores of Israeli protesters gathered outside the prime minister’s office, including people whose relatives were killed in terrorist acts. The protesters carried signs bearing the names and portraits of some of the victims. But the stormy atmosphere surrounding the cabinet vote underlined some of the challenges that lay ahead for the negotiators.
“It rips our heart out that they are aiding and abetting the terrorists,” said one, Yehudit Tayar. Two of the ministers who voted against the release were from Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party, as were the two who abstained.
On Saturday evening, Mr. Netanyahu took the unusual step of issuing what he called “an open letter to the citizens of Israel” to explain the contentious move. The letter gave no details about who would be released or when. Gilad Erdan, one of the Likud ministers who voted against the prisoner release, told Army Radio that he could not support it on moral grounds, because unlike other prisoner exchange deals, “in this case there is no certain reward for Israel and its citizens.”
Mr. Netanyahu began his letter, which was posted on the prime minister’s Web site and disseminated through the Israeli news media, with an acknowledgment of the unpopularity of the gesture, which many Israelis view as a painful concession with nothing guaranteed in return. The letter noted that the decision “is painful for the bereaved families, it is painful for the entire nation, and it is also very painful for me — it collides with the incomparably important value of justice.” As the cabinet meeting got under way, scores of Israeli protesters gathered outside the prime minister’s office, including people whose relatives were killed in terrorist attacks. The protesters carried signs bearing the names and portraits of some of the victims.
On Friday, Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli newspaper, published an impassioned open letter to Mr. Netanyahu from Abie Moses, whose pregnant wife and 5-year-old son, Tal, were fatally burned in a firebomb attack on their car in April 1987. Mr. Moses said that faced with the likely release of their killer, Mohammad Adel Hassin Daoud, “the wounds have reopened; the memories, which we live with on a daily basis, turn into physical pain, in addition to the emotional pain of coping daily with the nightmare.” “It rips our heart out that they are aiding and abetting the terrorists,” said Yehudit Tayar, one of the protesters.
Mr. Moses added, “In our opinion, if his release will lead to attaining of peace, let him be released outside the boundaries of Palestine, exiled and never allowed to see his family members again, just as we cannot see ours.” Another potential stumbling block lies in the lack of clarity from the Israeli side about the identity of all the prisoners to be freed.
Over the years, thousands of Palestinian prisoners have been exchanged for Israeli soldiers who had been taken captive, or for the bodies of abducted soldiers. During his previous term in office, Mr. Netanyahu reached an agreement with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs Gaza, and exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held captive in Gaza for five years. The Palestinians said they had presented Mr. Kerry with a list of the 104 prisoners, all of whom were convicted before the Oslo peace accords came into effect in the 1990s. The list included about two dozen Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Mr. Erekat emphasized on Sunday that they were among those to be released.
An Israeli government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said many of those who remained in Israeli jails, like the 104 now chosen for early release, had been involved in particularly gruesome acts. But Israel has long refused to grant early release to such prisoners along with other Palestinians, seeing it as an affront to Israeli sovereignty.
“The goal here is to augment the political dialogue with confidence-building measures,” the official said. Mr. Netanyahu will lead a team of five ministers who will determine the identity of the prisoners to be released during the negotiations. But he deferred any decision on whether they would include Arab citizens of Israel, saying that any such release would be brought to another cabinet vote.
The prisoner issue is the one that has inflamed passions on both sides. Palestinians view these long-serving prisoners, convicted before the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, as political prisoners and freedom fighters whose release is long overdue. Moshe Yaalon, the defense minister and a member of the ministerial team, said in a statement on Sunday that he opposed the release of Arab Israelis, adding that Mr. Abbas “does not represent them.”
“This is the biggest achievement we will have had this year,” the Palestinian official said.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Alyza Sebenius contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Alyza Sebenius and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.