U.S. Drops Bid to Sway Israel on Settlements |
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By: Mark Landler, NYT 07.12.2010 WASHINGTON — After three weeks of fruitless haggling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration has given up its effort to persuade the Israeli government to freeze construction of Jewish settlements for 90 days, a senior administration official said Tuesday. The decision leaves Middle East peace talks in flux, with the Palestinians refusing to resume direct negotiations absent a moratorium, and the United States struggling to find another formula to bring them back to the table. It is another setback in what has proved to be a star-crossed campaign by President Obama.
The administration decided to pull the plug, officials said, because it concluded that even if Mr. Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to accept a freeze — which he had not yet been able to do — the 90-day negotiating period would not have produced the progress on core issues that the United States originally had sought.
“We made a strong effort, and everyone tried in good faith to resume direct negotiations in a way that would be meaningful and sustainable,” said a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations, which are continuing. “But the extension wasn’t actually going to do that.”
Administration officials did not offer a Plan B to revive the talks, and analysts said it was not clear that the administration had one, beyond a general commitment to keep talking to the Israelis and Palestinians about the major issues that divide them: borders, security and the status of Jerusalem, among others.
A preview of the administration’s next move could come in an address on Middle East policy that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver on Friday at the Brookings Institution. But the administration’s strategy appeared to be unsettled.
“Wisely, in my view, the administration is bending to reality,” said Robert Malley, a peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “The most likely scenario is that this moratorium was going to buy them a short reprieve, and was then going to plunge them into the same crisis they were in before.”
Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians issued a response to the news. But administration officials said the United States made the decision after consultations between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Netanyahu. The two had hammered out the agreement on a 90-day freeze, which Mr. Netanyahu later said he could not sell to his cabinet without written security assurances from the Americans.
... For now, the administration will revert to brokering indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Next week, an official said, the chief Israeli negotiator, Yitzhak Molcho, and his Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, will travel to Washington to meet with American officials. Analysts said that, while embarrassing, the administration’s decision to abandon the freeze would enable it to reassess a policy that has been stuck on a single issue. “If it encourages that more comprehensive review, then it’s not a bad thing,” said Daniel Levy, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.
David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, “It’s the end of a phase for the administration: ‘We’re not focusing on the appetizers anymore; we’re focusing on the main course.’ ”
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