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Israel PM Ehud Olmert, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff August 2, 2007 |
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Middle East experts from the left and the right are skeptical of what can be achieved from current US-brokered talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. They also expressed doubt that the US-sponsored Mideast peace conference slated for the fall will progress peace.
"The critical question is whether Israel and the Palestinian Authority are in a position to have meaningful negotiations on issues of permanent status," Dore Gold said, who was Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999, during the administration of Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu. "The hardest problem that the US will face is the weakness of [PA Chairman] Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, an issue that maybe cannot be ameliorated by money and guns alone."
However Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a meeting yesterday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called on the Israelis and Palestinians to draft "agreed principles" for a two-state solution. Olmert intends to use that as the foundation for the peace conference in the fall. Divisive issues like refugees, borders and Jerusalem are to be excluded from current talks.
Olmert told the US secretary of state the Palestinians are currently unable to put into effect a final-status deal, and underscored the need to proceed cautiously. "The Americans and the Palestinians also understand this," the source said, according to Haaretz.
Olmert also urged the inclusion of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain and other Persian Gulf states in the conference, telling Rice that it is important for the delegates to be of ministerial rank at least.
"If it [the conference] is only made up of countries that recognize Israel, then these are exactly the countries we don't need [to set up special meetings in order] to talk with," former director-general of the Foreign Ministry and former foreign affairs adviser to Labor's Ehud Barak, Alon Liel, said.
Both Liel and Gold are also critical of America's current strategy in forging peace between the two peoples. Gold warns that the Bush administration should act according to current realities, not those at the time of the Road Map's creation.
"Were Israel to withdraw from the Jordan Valley [as part of a process of relinquishing territory] in order to create a Palestinian state, it would create a vacuum that would draw in radical Islamic forces like al-Qaida from Iraq and Hizbullah from Lebanon," Gold said.
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