HAMAS’S KILLING of four Israeli settlers dominated the start of two days of Middle East peace talks here yesterday.
US president Barack Obama condemned the attack near Hebron on Tuesday as “senseless slaughter” and said it was “an example of what we’re up against”.
Mr Obama did not distinguish between Israel’s security within its internationally recognised borders and that of settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“The message should be got out to Hamas and everybody else who is taking credit for these heinous crimes that this is not going to stop us from not only ensuring a secure Israel but also securing a longer-lasting peace,” the US president said.
Speaking after Mr Obama under the portico of the White House, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said their talks “centred round the need to have security arrangements that are able to roll back this kind of terror and other threats to Israel’s security”.
Earlier, at a meeting with secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the host for official talks today, Mr Netanyahu said: “We will not let the blood of Israeli civilians go unpunished . . . We will not let terror decide where Israelis live or the configuration of our final borders.”
Mr Obama expressed his “utmost confidence” in the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who was to meet with him in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, followed by King Abdullah of Jordan and President Hosni Bubarak of Egypt. The US president and all the Middle Eastern leaders were to make statements yesterday evening, before dining in the White House.
The chief goal of the talks, according to US officials, is for both sides to agree on an agenda for twice-monthly talks between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Abbas, with a deadline for reaching agreement – on the difficult issues of borders, the status of Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ right of return to what is now Israel and Israeli security – within a year.
But the resumption of negotiations after a hiatus of more than year and a half could be stillborn if Israel resumes building settlements when the current moratorium expires on September 26th. “Netanyahu can have settlements or peace, but he can’t have both,” the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said this week.
Hamas yesterday issued a statement saying Mr Abbas’s security services arrested 150 Hamas activists in the West Bank after Tuesday’s killings. Settlers said they would respond to the attack by breaking the moratorium and beginning the construction of new homes across the West Bank.
In a more hopeful development, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told Haaretznewspaper that while West Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem would remain Israeli in any peace agreement, 250,000 Palestinians would be allowed to keep the neighbourhoods where they live in East Jerusalem, and the Old City would be placed under a "special regime".
In a briefing before the talks began, Senator George Mitchell, Mr Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace, cited a poll showing that a majority of Arabs believe years of intense conflict would follow a collapse in prospects for a two-state solution.
“There is a window of opportunity, a moment in time within which there remains the possibility of achieving the two-state solution,” Mr Mitchell said, promising the US “will play an active and sustained role in the process”.
Mr Mitchell said the US does “not expect Hamas to play a role in this immediate process” but left the door open if the Islamist movement “complies with the basic requirements of democracy and non-violence”.
Hamas’s victory in democratic elections in 2006 was not recognised, and the group seized power in the Gaza Strip the following year. The former senator said he is often asked why the US talked to the IRA but will not talk to Hamas. “They’ve very different,” he said. “But on the central point . . . in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin did not enter the negotiations until after 15 months had elapsed.”