Obama tells Abbas that Palestinian and Israeli leaders must take “risks” for peace

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and US president Barack Obama hold meetings in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on March 17. Saul Loeb / AFP Photo

WASHINGTON // The US president Barack Obama on Monday told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that both he and Israeli leaders must make tough political decisions and take “risks” for peace.

Mr Abbas, who travelled to Washington two weeks after a visit by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel’s release of a fourth tranche of Palestinian prisoners later this month would show how serious it was about extending peace talks.

“As I said to prime minister Netanyahu when he was here just a few weeks ago, I believe that now is the time ... to embrace this opportunity,” Mr Obama told Mr Abbas during their meeting at the Oval Office .

“It is very hard, very challenging. We are going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we able to move forward.”

The US leader was seeking to secure Mr Abbas’s agreement on a US framework to extend peace talks, which have so far lasted seven months but not made tangible progress, past an end-of April deadline.

Mr Obama said everyone already understood the shape of an “elusive” peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, saying it would be based on 1967 lines with mutual land swaps.

Mr Abbas did not directly address the Israeli government’s demand for the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a “Jewish” state.

He noted, through a translator, that the Palestinians had recognised Israel’s legitimacy in 1988 and in “1993 we recognised the state of Israel”.

Mr Abbas also noted the agreement that the Palestinians have with Israel on the release of a fourth batch of prisoners by March 29.

“This will give a very solid impression about the seriousness of the Israelis on the peace proces,” he said.

Israeli ministers said last week that they would have difficulty approving the release if agreement was not reached to extend the peace talks.

Israel committed to the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners in four tranches when talks were launched in July.

It has so far released 78 of those in three batches, with Palestinians demanding that the fourth also include Arab Israelis.

“Three weeks ago, the consensus was, ‘Yes, they’ll find a way forward because no one really wants to walk away from this process,’” said Robert Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former US state department official. “Now, people are saying, ‘Well, maybe not.’”

The Palestinians are “digging in” over issues that include the description of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and Mr Abbas has not signalled what concessions he could accept to keep talking, Mr Danin said.

Mr Abbas met the US secretary of state John Kerry in Washington on Sunday.

A Palestinian official said Mr Abbas might extend the talks past an April 29 deadline if Israel freed more prisoners and dropped its objection to freezing settlement construction.

The Palestinian leader is under pressure from members of his Fatah party to abandon the negotiations and press for sanctions against Israel at the United Nations and other international bodies. Fatah’s executive committee issued a statement on March 12 opposing any extension to the negotiations mediated by Mr Kerry.

“This is a message to the whole world, to the Israelis and Americans, that we will not surrender,” said Hanan Eid, a 32- year-old government worker from Ramallah.

“While there is still a chance that a piece of paper will emerge, I don’t think it will be the breakthrough document Kerry was hoping for,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast peace negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

In any case, “unless it’s met on the ground with real, tangible, concrete improvements to the Palestinian conditions on the ground, I think it’s going to be a tough sell”, he said.

Mr Kerry told a US House Appropriations subcommittee on March 12 that the US was seeking “some kind of understanding of the road forward”.

* Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg