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Kerry Extends Israel Trip Amid Speculation on Peace Talks Kerry Extends Israel Trip Amid Speculation on Talks
(about 7 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State John Kerry extended his trip to Israel a day on Saturday amid speculation that he was closing in on a deal to revive the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. JERUSALEM — In a hectic day of shuttle diplomacy with senior Israeli and Palestinian leaders in two capitals, Secretary of State John Kerry struggled on Saturday to close a deal to revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Reports in the Israeli news media have suggested that a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials under American and Jordanian auspices might be announced soon. But there has been no comment from United States officials. By the end of the day, however, it remained unclear to what extent Mr. Kerry had been able to narrow the gap between the two sides during three days of high-level meetings in Jordan and Israel.
Mr. Kerry’s decision to rip up his itinerary and stay in Israel has heightened expectations of a potential breakthrough. Even as a dinner meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel dragged into the early hours of Sunday, the Americans signaled that Mr. Kerry would be traveling to Ramallah, West Bank, later in the day to meet again with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, whom Mr. Kerry has already met with twice in Amman, Jordan, in recent days.
After canceling a Saturday news conference in Jordan and a planned trip later that day to the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Kerry flew by helicopter to Amman for a two-hour meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and his advisers, including the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Mr. Kerry had been scheduled to fly on Sunday to a long-planned meeting of foreign ministers in Brunei, and as Sunday arrived there was no announcement that his departure would be extended yet again.
Asked if he was making progress as the meeting got under way, Mr. Kerry replied, “Working hard.” From the start, Mr. Kerry acknowledged that getting Israeli-Palestinian talks started would be a formidable undertaking. But he has resolutely insisted that it is doable — so much so that he has traveled between Jordan and Israel by motorcade, Jordanian helicopter and his own American government plane pursuing a formula that could lead to the first formal negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since 2010.
Mr. Kerry then headed back to Israel for an evening meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, his third such meeting in three days. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s minister of justice and the government’s chief negotiator on the Palestinian issue, and Isaac Molho, Mr. Netanyahu’s special envoy, were to attend the meeting as well, according to a State Department official. Mr. Kerry’s trip had appeared to take a dramatic turn on Saturday when he ripped up his itinerary and canceled a news conference and a trip that day to the United Arab Emirates so he could continue his meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders for another day.
Mr. Kerry is scheduled to fly on Sunday to Brunei for a meeting of foreign ministers, and his departure has become an unofficial deadline for showing results. That spurred speculation in the Israeli news media that a summit meeting among Israeli, Palestinian and American officials might be hosted by Jordan.
Mr. Kerry has frequently said that time is the enemy, arguing that attitudes harden over time and that unexpected developments can complicate painstaking efforts to lay the basis for progress at the negotiating table. At the start of Mr. Kerry’s dinner meeting here on Saturday with Mr. Netanyahu, there were indications that the principals thought speculation of a game-changing breakthrough had gotten out of hand.
“Time is the enemy of a peace process,” he said Wednesday during a visit to Kuwait. “The passage of time allows a vacuum to be filled by people who don’t want things to happen.” “They’re saying a four-way summit?" Mr. Netanyahu was heard to say to Mr. Kerry at the start of the dinner. “Did you hear that?”
On Friday night, Mr. Kerry had a Sabbath dinner with Shimon Peres, the Israeli president who won the Nobel Prize in 1994 for his efforts in producing the Oslo Accord and who has been a vocal and enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Kerry’s push to revive the Middle East peace process. “I did,” Mr. Kerry replied.
The dinner — Mr. Kerry’s third meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in three days — was all business. On the Israeli side, it also included Tzipi Livni, Israel’s minister of justice and the government’s chief negotiator on the Palestinian issue; Isaac Molho, Mr. Netanyahu’s special envoy; Yaakov Amidror, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser; and Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Mr. Netanyahu’s military secretary.
On the American side, Mr. Kerry was joined by Frank Lowenstein, his Middle East adviser; Jonathan Schwartz, a State Department legal expert; and John Bass, a senior aide to Mr. Kerry at the State Department.
But skeptics were insisting there was little reason to anticipate a breakthrough. Gilad Erdan, an Israeli government minister and member of the Likud party, asserted on Israeli television just before Mr. Kerry’s meeting with Mr. Netanyahu that the two sides were not close to resuming negotiations.
Mr. Abbas, Mr. Erdan said, "is still demanding the same preconditions that we have no intention of complying with."
Mr. Kerry said early during his travels that significant headway toward resuming the peace talks needed to be made long before September, when the General Assembly resumes its debate on the Middle East.
Mr. Kerry has frequently said that time is the enemy, arguing that attitudes could harden and that unexpected developments could complicate painstaking efforts to lay the basis for progress at the negotiating table.
Even before Mr. Kerry left on this trip to the Middle East, his fifth, American officials were signaling that he was prepared to make a sixth if needed.
On Saturday, Mr. Kerry had little to say as he went from meeting to meeting. Asked if he was making any progress as his Amman meeting with Mr. Abbas got under way, Mr. Kerry replied, “Working hard.”

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting.

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting.