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Diplomatic Breakthrough: Kerry says Israel, Palestinians to resume direct peace talks
TEL AVIV, Israel (JPost) – Israel and the Palestinians have laid the groundwork for a resumption of peace talks after an almost three-year stalemate, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday.
“We have reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” he told reporters in Jordan. “The agreement is still in the process of being formalized.”
Kerry convened a news conference in Amman after meeting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas earlier Friday as part of a last-ditch effort to win Ramallah’s approval for a renewal of talks. Before meeting Abbas, Kerry held discussions with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Amman on Friday and had been consulting Israeli officials by telephone.
A State Department official in Amman said Kerry would go to Ramallah in the afternoon to see Abbas, but did not disclose his proposals to revive peace talks that broke down in 2010.
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Former PA minister: PM Netanayhu met secretly with senior PA official (Photo US Embassy Tel Aviv)
Israel and Palestinians reach agreement to resume talks
AMMAN, Jordan (BBC News) – Israel and the Palestinians have reached an agreement which establishes the basis for resuming peace talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry has announced. Mr Kerry made the announcement in Jordan, where he has been meeting with both sides.
He gave no details of the agreement, but said both sides would hold initial talks in Washington next week.
- Abbas fails to win PLO, Fatah backing for resuming peace talks
- Netanyahu denies agreeing to peace talks based on ’67 lines
John Kerry heads for West Bank
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John Kerry heads for West Bank
AMMAN, Jordan (The Guardian) – On Friday morning John Kerry met chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Amman and then scheduled the short helicopter flight to Ramallah, shifting his campaign to renew the peace talks into diplomatic overdrive.
A Palestinian official confirmed that Kerry would meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Friday afternoon.
At a stormy late-night meeting on Thursday, Palestinians balked at dropping a main condition for talks with the Israelis, demanding a guarantee that negotiations on borders between a Palestinian state and Israel would be based on the ceasefire line that held from 1949 until the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The demand casts a cloud of uncertainty over months of US mediation efforts because Israel rejects preconditions.
Hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians toward talks, President Barack Obama asked Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to work with Kerry “to resume negotiations with Palestinians as soon as possible”, according to a statement released by the White House late on Thursday.
Previous Israeli governments twice negotiated on the basis of the 1967 lines, but no peace accord was reached. Besides disagreeing over how much hand to trade and where, the two sides failed to agree on other key issues, including dividing Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
Kerry: Israel, Palestinians close to relaunching peace talks
