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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced the relaunch of direct peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The President will host the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president to Washington in September. The World’s Jason Margolis has more.

• From the BBC: Mideast crisis

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World.  Israeli’s and Palestinians will resume direct peace talks in about two weeks.  That’s the word today from Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.  She said President Obama will meet separately with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President, Mahnood Abbas on September first.  The following day, Clinton will bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for the first direct negotiations since December, 2008.  As The World’s Jason Margolis reports, today’s announcement was met by a little hope and a lot of skepticism.

JASON MARGOLIS:  The Obama Administration has set an aggressive goal.  One year to resolve all final status issues in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Here’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, speaking at a news conference today.

HILLARY CLINTON:  Without a doubt, we will hit more obstacles.  The enemies of peace will keep trying to defeat us and to derail these talks.  But I ask of the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region.

MARGOLIS:  Before Clinton ever reached the podium to make her announcement, skeptics in Israel and in the Arab world were already sounding off.  Policy experts in the U.S. also expressed similar doubts.  Here’s Shibley Telhami at the University of Maryland.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI:  People don’t have trust on both sides.  People are pessimistic that an agreement is possible.

MARGOLIS:  And Haim Malka with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

HAIM MALKA:  The old sticking points, the old problems remain and it’s not clear how the two parties are going to try to get over those.

MARGOLIS:  Malka says it’s hard to see how Palestinian President, Mahnood Abbas, can negotiate with the Israeli’s when Abbas is still embroiled in a deep, intra-Palestinian conflict with Hamas.

MALKA:  There’s really no meeting of minds there between President Abbas and Hamas and Hamas has made it very clear that they would reject any kind of a peace agreement that he negotiates at the moment.

MARGOLIS:  Shortly after today’s press conference, a Hamas spokesman called the American led peace talks a rouge and a new attempt to deceive the Palestinian people.  Shibley Telhami says these latest negotiations are the end of the line for the chance at a two state solution.  The last chance to resolve the Israeli Palestinian issue for a generation.  But he said unlike past efforts, this time there’s more pressure being brought by the mediators.

TELHAMI:  There is an American recognition, an international recognition, resolving this issue, the Israel issue is really important not only to Arabs and Israeli’s but to global security and certainly to America’s national interest.

MARGOLIS:  Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell has been mediating indirect Middle East peace talks since May.  He stood beside Secretary Clinton at today’s news conference.  He compared the Middle East negotiations to the peace process in Northern Ireland.  He says in the course of negotiating that settlement, he was asked hundreds of times when he was going to leave because people said the effort had failed.

GEORGE MITCHELL:  And of course if the objective is to achieve a peace agreement, until you do achieve one, you have failed to do so.  In a sense in Northern Ireland we had about 700 days of failure and one day of success.

MARGOLIS:  Mitchell said past failed efforts at a Middle East peace “cannot deter us from trying again.”  For The World, I’m Jason Margolis.

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