Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Resuming

By AMY TEIBEL

JERUSALEM – Israelis and Palestinians resume negotiations for the first time in nearly seven years Wednesday, trying to reconcile conflicting claims and clashing dreams in a bid to end six decades of conflict.

Late Tuesday, Israel announced that the talks would be moved from Jerusalem’s ornate King David Hotel to an undisclosed location. No reason for the change was given but Israeli media reports said it was an attempt to lower the profile of the meeting, since it would deal mostly with procedural matters.

Israel’s plan to expand an east Jerusalem neighborhood and an Israeli military operation that killed six militants in the Gaza Strip have cast a pall over the talks even before they begin. Palestinians accused Israel of sabotaging the negotiations, a charge Israel rejected.

The Gaza operation was not expected to disrupt the talks since Israeli troops had withdrawn to a buffer zone along the territory’s border with Israel by daybreak Wednesday.

But on the east Jerusalem settlement, Palestinian officials said that they wouldn’t agree to discuss anything else until Israel agrees to halt all building in the territories the Palestinians want to include in a state.

The last round of talks crumbled in early 2001, shortly after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising. Since then, more than 4,400 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis have been killed.

Israel and the Palestinians formally relaunched peacemaking at an international conference last month in the United States. They set an ambitious target of December 2008 – near the end of President Bush’s tenure – to conclude a peace deal.

Negotiators are expected to quickly move to issues that have buried past talks – West Bank settlements, borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinian refugees.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, the chief negotiators of the two sides, are expected to lead Wednesday’s talks. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert aren’t scheduled to attend, though the men, who speak regularly, are expected to meet soon.

While the issues at the heart of the conflict haven’t changed, conditions may be better now for fruitful talks.

Opinion polls show that majorities on both sides want a peace settlement. Negotiators say a failure could strengthen rising Islamic extremism in the region, and U.S. and Arab backing for peace moves – absent for years – is providing an important push.

But obstacles remain. Both leaders face domestic troubles, making it tough for them to offer concessions.

Israeli hawks are determined to bring down a peacemaking government, and Abbas now controls only the West Bank, having lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas militants. The violent Islamic group is committed to Israel’s destruction and allows Gaza militants to fire rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel almost daily.

Israel, meanwhile, has angered the Palestinians by announcing last week that it would build 307 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians consider any construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem to be settlement activity and a violation of the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which requires Israel to halt all settlement construction.

Israel says the settlement freeze does not apply to Jerusalem, whose eastern sector is claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of their future state. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, annexed the area and considers the entire city to be its capital.

"The decision to build new housing units in Har Homa created a lot of problems for the credibility of the peace process," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel was "committed to dealing with all of the issues" that must be resolved to reach a peace accord.

"We are not running away from any of them," Regev said. But to start a successful peacemaking process, he added, Israel and the Palestinians must first try to find "an agreed procedure … for dealing with these complex issues."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he hoped the talks would move past procedure. "I think the expectation that they had set out was that this was going to be more of an organizational kind of get-together," he said.

Mideast envoy Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, said an agreement is possible if the two sides have the proper intentions, but "it needs the most intensive focus from the international community and from the United States."

While pursuing a peace agreement with Abbas’ government, Israel has carried out frequent airstrikes and ground incursions into Gaza in retaliation for Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli border communities.

On Tuesday, Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by aircraft attacked Gaza, killing six militants. The one-day incursion drew harsh condemnation from Hamas and Abbas’ government.

"The Israeli policy of escalation at all levels aims to sabotage and place obstacles before the negotiations even before they start," Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.