Obama opens peace talks

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened a new round of Mideast peacemaking, bringing Israeli and Palestinian leaders together yesterday for talks aimed at forging agreement within one year on a two-state solution: a sovereign Palestine and a secure Israel.

Expectations were low as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived on Tuesday for preparatory talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has spent months coaxing the parties back to the bargaining table.
The talks will be the first face-to-face sessions between the Israelis and Palestinians since December 2008, but the two sides are far apart on all key issues, so major progress in the early going is seen as unlikely.
Pointing up the tensions that will probably test Obama’s diplomacy, a Palestinian gunman opened fire on Tuesday on an Israeli vehicle traveling near the West Bank city of Hebron, killing four passengers. The militant Hamas movement, which rejects Israel’s right to exist and opposes peace talks, claimed responsibility. Israeli officials called the shooting an attempt to sabotage the discussions and the White House weighed in with its own condemnation.
“This brutal attack underscores how far the enemies of peace will go to try to block progress” in the talks, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a strongly-worded statement. “It is crucial that the parties persevere, keep moving forward even through difficult times, and continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region that provides security for all peoples.”In remarks to reporters before their meeting on Tuesday evening at a Washington hotel, Netanyahu, with Clinton at his side, said: “We will not let terror decide where Israelis live or the configuration of our final borders.
These and other issues will be determined in negotiations for peace that we are conducting and in these negotiations.”
Clinton was equally defiant.
“We pledge to do all we can always to protect and defend the state of Israel and to provide security to the Israeli people,” she said. “That is one of the paramount objectives that Israel has and the United States supports in these negotiations.” - Nampa-AP

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