Palestinian president calls for end to peace talks

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
The World’s Matthew Bell reports on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ appeal to the Arab League to quit peace talks after Israel’s refusal to extend a freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: There is a chance that Middle East peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians could carry on in one form or another. Moderate Arab nations gathered at an Arab League summit in Libya today proposed a return to indirect negotiations to save face. Direct US-backed talks began last month. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he cannot keep negotiating with Israel unless it extends a settlement building freeze that expired in late September. The World’s Matthew Bell reports from Jerusalem.

MATTHEW BELL:  A report today in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz suggested that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. If peace talks with Israel collapse, he’s said he’ll resign as president and dismantle the Palestinian Authority. But government spokesman Ghassan Khatib says that’s not going to happen.

GHASSAN KHATIB:  I don’t think that a resignation of President Abbas or a dissolving of the Palestinian Authority is seen as a solution to the current crisis. Actually, such thinking would add to the difficulties the Palestinians are already having.

BELL: At the center of those difficulties, Khatib says, are Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian president has demanded that Israel extend a moratorium on settlement building. It expired on September 26^th. But Abbas’s deadline has slipped.

HERB KEINON: I don’t think that these deadlines are set in stone. I do think that they’re elastic and I do think that if there’s a sense there that there might be a way to resolve this thing, then they’ll push it off for another time.

BELL: Herb Keinon is diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

KEINON: Right now, the core negotiation over this particular issue is not between Jerusalem and the Palestinians, but rather between Jerusalem and Washington. And I think the Arab League is going to want to wait and see what they come up with before making a final say. I don’t think, without seeing what formula is being worked out between America and Israel, that they’re going to lock the door on further talks.

BELL: The Obama administration is reportedly offering the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a package of incentives to freeze settlement building for another 60 or 90 days. Even so, Keinon says Israel isn’t hearing what it wants from Washington.

KEINON: We’re not starting from zero here. There was a letter between George Bush and Ariel Sharon right before Israel left Gaza, which the Obama administration has never really signed off on. They haven’t thrown it away, but they haven’t adopted its policies.

BELL: Those policies included US guarantees on Israel’s security and Palestinian refugees. The letter also supported Israel’s desire to annex three large settlement blocks. In return, Israel would give up land elsewhere for a Palestinian state. Middle East expert Nathan Brown of George Washington University says there’s an expectation that the parties will find a mutually acceptable formula to keep peace talks from collapsing. But Nathan says that doesn’t mean the talks will be productive.

NATHAN BROWN:  It’s true that you can probably still find majorities on each side in terms of public opinion that support a two-state solution, but the degree of cynicism and distrust is so deep that I don’t even think creative leaderships could get around those facts. You’ve got publics on both side that have essentially checked out of the peace process and see it as irrelevant to their lives.

BELL: And that, Brown says, is a deeply worrying problem that the US administration may not have fully grasped. In other words, keeping the talks alive is one thing. But getting to real solutions is something else entirely. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Jerusalem.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.