Kerry Says It’s ‘Reality Check Time’ in Stalled Mideast Talks
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JODI RUDOREN
Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that he would confer with
President Obama about whether to continue in efforts to break an impasse
between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
RABAT,
Morocco — Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the Obama
administration planned to re-evaluate its approach to Middle East
peacemaking and decide whether it was worth continuing its effort in
light of the inability of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to make
progress.
In
response to a question while visiting Morocco, Mr. Kerry said that he
would return to Washington to confer with President Obama before
deciding on the next steps. He said it was “reality-check time.”
“There
are limits to the amount of time and effort that the United States can
spend if the parties themselves are unwilling to take constructive steps
in order to be able to move forward,” he said.
“We
intend to evaluate,” he added. “Both sides say they want to continue.
Neither party has said they have called it off. But we are not going to
sit there indefinitely. It is not an open-ended effort.”
Israel
and the Palestinian Authority have been at odds in recent days over
Israel’s refusal to release a batch of Palestinian prisoners and over
the Palestinian Authority’s applications to join a number of
international organizations. Neither side informed the Americans before
taking the steps, officials said.
Some
critics have asserted that Mr. Kerry has devoted too much attention to
pursuing Middle East peace at the expense of other pressing foreign
policy issues.
Mr.
Kerry defended his efforts, saying that the nearly nine months he has
spent trying to encourage serious talks in the Middle East were not
wasted because the parties had narrowed their differences on divisive
matters.
But he acknowledged that the United States faced an array of foreign policy challenges, including in Ukraine, Iran and Syria.
“We have an enormous amount on the plate,” he said.
Yair
Lapid, the centrist Israeli finance minister, said Friday that the
events of the past day “raised serious doubts” about whether Mahmoud
Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was really interested
in reaching an agreement. He was referring to a broad new list of
demands that the Palestinian news agency Maan said on Thursday was being
presented by Palestinian negotiators as a condition for extending the
talks.
“It
looks more like a deliberate provocation aimed at blowing up the
talks,” Mr. Lapid, whose Yesh Atid Party has backed the negotiations,
wrote on his Facebook page. “No Israeli will conduct negotiations at any
price.”
Michael
Herzog, a retired Israeli general serving as a consultant to the
negotiations, said Friday that Mr. Abbas’s international gambit “pushed
us into a deep crisis.”
Naftali
Bennett, Israel’s economy minister and the leader of the right-wing
Jewish Home party, responded to reports that the Palestinians were
threatening to have Israel prosecuted at the International Criminal
Court by revealing that he had begun preparations to bring claims
against the Palestinians. Yediot Aharonot, a leading Israeli newspaper,
reported Friday that Mr. Bennett had consulted international law experts
and determined that rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and payments by the
Palestinian Authority to prisoners could be grounds for legal action.
“I
hear Abu Mazen saying that if there is no prisoner release he will go
to The Hague, so I’m telling him: Go, you’ll have lawsuits waiting for
you there,” Mr. Bennett was quoted as saying, using Mr. Abbas’s
nickname. “We want to have a bullet in the barrel against Abu Mazen.”
The
new Palestinian demands, according to Maan, included a written
commitment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recognizing a
Palestinian state along the border lines from before the 1967 war, with
East Jerusalem as the capital; the release of 1,200 Palestinian
prisoners; and an end to Israeli travel, import, export, fishing and
farming restrictions in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli
officials involved in the talks said they could not agree to such
conditions because they were final status issues that need to be
negotiated.. Several Palestinian leaders were quoted in the local news
media Friday as saying the Maan report was not accurate, but they
declined to specify what new demands had been made.
On Friday, politicians on each side of the disagreement sought to blame the other for the breakdown.
“Every
time there is a proposal on the table, whether Israeli or American or
American-Israeli, that obligates the Palestinians to make a decision,
they disappear,” Tzachi Hanegbi, a member of Parliament from Mr.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said on Israeli radio. “The Palestinians have a
deep problem, a leadership problem,” he said. “They are, unfortunately,
incapable of making a decision that entails a historic compromise.”
But
Muhammad Shtayyeh, a senior aide to Mr. Abbas and a former member of
the negotiating team, said the crisis stemmed from Israel’s insistence
that a fourth batch of prisoners, promised as part of the nine-month
talks that started last summer, would be freed only if the Palestinians
agreed to extend negotiations for another nine months.
“What
is happening now is that Netanyahu is trying to get us to pay five
times for the same thing,” Mr. Shtayyeh said. “Talks are not about
extensions, talks are about intentions.”
Violence
broke out Friday afternoon at a protest against the canceled prisoner
release outside a West Bank prison, with Palestinian officials reporting
that 40 demonstrators were injured by Israeli forces using live
ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas. Some 250 people carrying
Palestinian flags and pictures of prisoners had gathered for prayer
outside Ofer Prison, between the West Bank cities of Ramallah and
Bitunia.
“We
will continue our marches and our protests, to send a message to the
United States that Israel must release the fourth batch of prisoners,”
said Mahmoud Al-Aloul, a member of the central committee of Mr. Abbas’s
Fatah faction, who helped organize the demonstration. “The United States
should pressure Israel to do that.”
The
Palestinian medical relief committee said that seven people sustained
gunshots to their legs; eight were hit by rubber bullets; and 24
suffered from tear-gas inhalation. A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense
Forces said soldiers had used .22-caliber rounds and other
riot-dispersal means because protesters burned tires and threw rocks,
and that five of the injured had been taken to a hospital.
Samer
Salah, a 26-year-old construction worker from the village of Kuber,
said he was hit by rubber bullets that broke through the windows of his
old Subaru as he arrived at the demonstration.
“The
soldier who hit me was only two meters away from me,” Mr. Salah, whose
head was bleeding, said in a cell-phone conversation with his wife. “I
came here to participate in the prayer, and I wish I didn’t come.”
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