Ahead of Peace Talks, Envoys Offer Differing Views

WASHINGTON (Aug. 31) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are on their way to Washington for the first Middle East peace talks since 2008, but their chief envoys here offered widely diverging views on what the two sides expect to come out of this latest round of negotiations.

In separate interviews with AOL News, Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., and Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestinian Authority representative in Washington, previewed the talks that will kick off with a White House dinner Wednesday evening hosted by President Barack Obama. The next morning the leaders, joined by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, will begin direct negotiations on final status issues that have remained unresolved for decades.

Given the history of Middle East peace talks, only a cockeyed optimist would predict an outbreak of peace following this latest round of negotiations. Indeed, efforts to sabotage the meeting turned bloody Tuesday when a Palestinian gunman killed four Israelis traveling in a vehicle near the West Bank city of Hebron, home to an enclave of 500 militant ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers living among more than 100,000 Palestinians.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Jonathan Peled said the timing of the terrorist attack was aimed at sabotaging the negotiations before they began, but he added that they would not derail them.

Before the killings, Robert Danin, former head of the Office of Quartet Representative Tony Blair in Jerusalem, had expressed optimism amid the challenges. "There is peace process fatigue," he said, "but I'm extremely hopeful."

He's not the only one. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad declared this "a moment of reckoning." And thanks to his efforts, there are signs that a nascent state is emerging from the corrupt kleptocracy left by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Netanyahu said he's ready to "seriously and responsibly" get down to negotiations. If a secret meeting in Amman, Jordan, between Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Abbas on the eve of the formal talks is any indication, he may well be sincere.

Still, the ambassadors offered AOL News a window into the intractable nature of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations:

The Talks: With Arab leaders and Blair in attendance, "The real work starts right away," said Oren, the American-born historian who gave up his U.S. passport to take his current position. Details on a follow-up round have not been released but Oren expects they could take place in Egypt in the second week of September.

"Objectively, the circumstances in the Middle East are more conducive to reaching an agreement than at any time in recent memory," said Oren, who added he is not naive about the challenges ahead. Still, "It's the first time in many decades that the Sunni Arab states see another Muslim state, Iran, as their principle adversary. The Palestinian Authority is financially sound, security forces are working superbly in restoring law and order. The Israeli government is very stable and very strong and the Obama administration is singularly committed to this. You put all those factors together and they generate a sense of optimism."

Areikat was not so upbeat. "We are unsure if we have a real partner in Israel who is willing to make peace with the Palestinians and allow the Palestinians to have civil rights," he said.

"The meetings here will focus on the launching and the ceremonial and the procedural issues of the negotiations, the technicalities," Areikat added. "There will be meetings between the parties but I'm not sure it will actually materialize into substantive discussions. I think the photo op will focus on that."

The Settlements: Oren reiterated Netanyahu's position that Israel is "sticking with" a Sept. 26 date to lift its 10-month moratorium on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the area that Palestinians want for their new state.

"There is no change in our policy. We believe that the settlement issue is part of the borders issue, which is a core issue to be discussed only in direct talks," he said. Despite reports that Israel might agree to a "mini" freeze in isolated settler outposts while restarting construction in the main settlement blocs the Jewish state hopes to keep in a land swap with the Palestinians, Oren said concessions should not be "a precondition for negotiating."

Areikat echoed his leader in Ramallah, who has said renewed settlement construction would bring newly launched talks to an immediate halt.

"The Obama administration asked both parties not to do anything to undermine or torpedo or harden the negotiations," he said. The Palestinians, he said, will not accept any construction moratorium that does not include disputed east Jerusalem. "We are against settlements, period. We don't distinguish" east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank as the government of Israel has since it annexed the area after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The Role of the United States: Areikat indicated that the prestige of the United States, which in the past helped broker peace agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan, is on the line. "The reputation of the United States is at stake" given that Obama and his diplomatic team pressured the Palestinians to take part in direct talks.

"The United States wanted the parties to go back to the negotiating table because they said that that is the only way they can really impact the course of these negotiations and get parties to resolve their differences," the Palestinian ambassador said. "The United States needs to translate its good intentions, good faith into some concrete action and show the world that they are taking a different approach. If we have similar approaches that were taken in the past, you and I know that this will lead nowhere."

Oren said Israel welcomes "the patient input" of U.S. officials, especially the promise of "bridging proposals" for when the two sides inevitably come to an impasse on key issues. "Ultimately, the Israelis and the Palestinians have to negotiate this face to face. There are going to be times when even with the best faith possible we will not be able to bridge some of the gaps," he said.

The Danger of Derailment: As the shooting in the West Bank demonstrated, militants are intent on having their say. Yet even before the two leaders left for Washington, the incendiary words of the elderly spiritual leader of the Shas religious party, part of Netanyahu's governing coalition, offered a reminder that either side could easily throw the negotiations off track.

When Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said Abbas and "all these evil people" should "be made gone from the world," the chief Palestinian negotiator accused him of calling for "genocide." Netanyahu's response was more tepid: "These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor the position of the government of Israel," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

A day later, after the State Department issued a stinging rebuke, Oren ratcheted up the condemnation. "We totally disassociate ourselves from this despicable comment which in no way reflects the government or people of Israel," he told AOL News.

Areikat called the rabbi's words "the most venomous religious incitement that can come out of any human being" and likened it to a fatwa, or death sentence, issued by some Muslim clerics. He found it ironic that an Israeli who "is in authority and has many followers" is stirring up ethnic hatred given the accusations by some in Israel that Palestinian leaders glorify suicide bombers by naming streets and schools after them.

"We have to worry about unexpected incidents in the Middle East all the time," Oren said before the West Bank shooting, "but if the two parties are committed, nothing will stop us."