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Israel suspends peace talks with Palestinians Israel suspends peace talks with Palestinians
(about 1 hour later)
Israel broke off peace talks with the Palestinians on Thursday, a day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced a reconciliation between his majority Fatah party and the militant Hamas faction, which does not recognize Israel as a legitimate country. Israel broke off peace talks with the Palestinians on Thursday, saying that a planned reconciliation between the moderate faction leading the talks and the militant Islamist group Hamas made negotiation impossible.
Israel’s announcement of the rupture effectively ends more than a year of U.S.-backed efforts to negotiate a deal that would establish an independent Palestine alongside Israel. Neither Israel nor the United States has declared the process dead, but the talks are due to expire next week unless both sides agree to an extension. The rupture appeared to be the final blow to an ambitious U.S.-sponsored effort to frame a peace treaty this year. Israeli-Palestinian talks that began last summer under heavy American pressure were already sputtering and were due to expire next week.
In an emergency meeting Thursday, members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet said they would never agree to bargain with a group opposed to Israel’s very existence. The negotiations, always a long shot, marked the first deep involvement by the Obama administration to address the in­trac­table conflict. The direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, often with a U.S. mediator present, had been the most sustained and substantive such discussions in more than five years.
Palestinian leaders said the proposed unified government should not be a bar to further talks with Israel, and Washington insisted Thursday that the troubled peace effort is not dead. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to rule out all discussion with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas in any capacity.
“I think the pact with Hamas kills peace,” Netanyahu said in an interview with NBC. “If it moves forward, it means peace moves backward.”
The Iranian-backed Hamas does not recognize Israel as a legitimate country, and Israel accuses the group of harboring extremists who carry out attacks against Israel from inside the Gaza Strip, a territory that Hamas rules.
The moderate Fatah party had announced Wednesday that it will reunite with Hamas after a seven-year split. An agreement signed in Gaza gives Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas five weeks to form a unified government.
It was not clear how Hamas would be integrated into the Fatah leadership, or whether the deal will hold. Secretary of State John F. Kerry spoke to Abbas on Thursday, after a call with Netanyahu on Wednesday. The State Department gave few details, but it said Kerry expressed disapproval of the reconciliation plan.
“We will never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities for peace,” Kerry said in brief remarks at the State Department. “We believe it is the only way to go. But right now, obviously, it’s at a very difficult point and the leaders themselves have to make decisions. It’s up to them.”
After a meeting of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, Israel announced Thursday that it would suspend peace talks with Abbas’s envoys at least during that five-week period. After that, the Netanyahu government said, it would refuse to return to talks with any Palestinian government backed by Hamas.
“Whoever chooses the terrorism of Hamas does not want peace,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued shortly after the meeting.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, said the new government could be structured to preserve the mandate for peace talks, and she played down the effect of Hamas’s inclusion.
“The new government will adhere to the PLO political program and will not engage in negotiations or political decision-making,” she said.
“The terms of the national reconciliation agreement are clear: Palestine honors its commitments, respects international law and continues its popular nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation.”
That appears to satisfy some but not all of the U.S. requirements for any future negotiations. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki listed them Thursday: “commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations.”
The United Nations’ envoy for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, met with Abbas on Thursday and issued a statement afterward saying the Palestinian leader had assured him that the new government will comply with previous PLO commitments, including “recognition of Israel, nonviolence and adherence to previous agreements.”
The United Nations supports a unified Palestinian government, Serry said, “as the only way to reunite the West Bank and Gaza under one legitimate Palestinian Authority.”
To keep the talks alive, both sides would have to agree to extend them past an April 29 deadline that Kerry set when formal negotiations began last year or resume them after a hiatus. The fast nine-month deadline was supposed to keep both sides at the table and focused on the most difficult issues.
Kerry had already acknowledged that it would slip, and the goal before this week’s events had been to find ways to offer each side sweeteners that could keep them at the table.
“There is always a way forward,” he said Thursday.
Without compromises from the leaders, however, peace “becomes very elusive,” Kerry said.
His chief negotiator, former ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, will remain in the region for now.
Kerry has long said that the talks may represent the last real chance to create an independent Palestine alongside Israel. Israeli settlement-building on land that the Palestinians claim for a state is one major obstacle. The hardened anger and grievance of both sides is another. The longer the conflict runs, the larger and more immutable those obstacles become.
Netanyahu’s coalition government includes members opposed to the peace talks but none who advocate armed conflict against the Palestinians.
If Abbas had hoped that reconciliation with Hamas would give him leverage to demand greater concessions from Israel, he apparently miscalculated: The move either forced or allowed Netanyahu to walk away.
In addition to suspending the talks indefinitely, the Israeli government said it is considering imposing economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority as a way to punish Abbas.
Israel took similar steps last month after the Palestinians approached 15 international organization s
to gain formal recognition as a state. Israel was angered by that move but did not cancel talks. The Hamas deal, however, made it impossible to continue, Israeli officials said.
“Abbas has formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls consistently for Israel’s destruction,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued shortly after the vote. “Instead of choosing peace, he has formed an alliance with an organization whose charter calls on Muslims to fight and kill Jews.”“Abbas has formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls consistently for Israel’s destruction,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued shortly after the vote. “Instead of choosing peace, he has formed an alliance with an organization whose charter calls on Muslims to fight and kill Jews.”
Israel and the United States view Hamas as a terrorist organization, and the Obama administration has said it was disappointed by Abbas’s decision. Eglash reported from Jerusalem.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has made the peace talks one of his signature diplomatic efforts, said it was up to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make the compromises necessary to go forward.
U.S. officials, he added, “will never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities of peace.”
In an interview with NBC News shortly after the announcement, Netanyahu said he hopes Abbas “changes his mind.” Until then, however, Netanyahu said his position is adamant.
“As long as I am prime minister of Israel, I will never negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by terrorist organizations committed to our destruction,” Netanyahu told NBC.
In addition to suspending peace talks indefinitely, the Israeli government also said it was considering imposing economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority as a way of punishing Abbas for the move.
Israel took similar steps last month after the Palestinians approached 15 international organizations to gain formal recognition as a state. Israel was angered by that move but did not cancel talks. The Hamas deal, however, made it impossible to continue, Israeli officials said.
In his statement, Netanyahu charged that Hamas has allowed the firing of more than 10,000 rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip territory it controls.
In response to criticism from Israel and the United States, senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub said that the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas would not pose an obstacle to peace.
In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, Rajoub said that Abbas would implement the reconciliation and that he recognizes the state of Israel. He added that Hamas leader Ismail Haniya would be obliged to uphold Abbas’s policy.