The Arab Democrat The Latest From The Arab World
Related Articles
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will meet separately with US peace envoy Martin Indyk on Friday, only a day after the five hour three-way talks between the parties, during which they failed to reach an agreement. According to sources, Indyk is to hold talks with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat in the city of Jericho in West Bank. Thursday’s talks between the parties involved, held in a hotel in Jerusalem, were reportedly very difficult.
Earlier this week, State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said that the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are working to reach agreement on extending the talks beyond the April 29 deadline. However, Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Aharonot daily on Friday that the talks, which have lasted for almost nine months now thanks to the efforts of US Secretary of State John Kerry, are just prolonged “mutual torture”.
“Kerry keeps them going like a gambler in a casino who insists in putting his money on the roulette wheel, with the hope that the wheel will stop on his number at some point. He believed that he would reach a peace agreement; then he limited himself to a framework agreement; he later limited himself even further to an American proposal for a framework; and then just to ideas. In the end, the entire prestige of the United States is invested in a marginal, questionable deal, which will only prolong the mutual torture”, he wrote.
The US has been pushing for an extension on the negotiations, which came to a standstill two weeks ago after Israel didn’t release a group of Palestinian prisoners it agreed to when the talks launched last year – as a part of the agreement, Israel was set to release 194 prisoners in four batches it had held before the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords; it cancelled the release of the last group of 26 last week. The batch includes 14 Arab Israelis, to which the Palestinians responded by seeking accession to many international treaties.
