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Kerry Arrives in Jordan on Mideast Peace Mission Kerry Arrives in Jordan on Mideast Peace Mission
(about 7 hours later)
AQABA, Jordan — Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Friday for talks with King Abdullah II of Jordan on a framework accord the United States has been trying to negotiate that would set the parameters for a possible comprehensive peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians. JERUSALEM — Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Jordan on Friday to consult King Abdullah II about the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, even as the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, reiterated positions that underscore the challenge Mr. Kerry faces in shrinking gaps between the two sides.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is scheduled to visit Washington on March 17 and to meet with President Obama. Mr. Kerry has frequently consulted with Jordan about the talks, and Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign minister, flew with Mr. Kerry from Rome. Mr. Abbas told student activists from his Fatah faction that he would “not accept Israel’s demands to recognize it as a Jewish state despite pressure put on us,” and that he considers illegal all homes Israel built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after seizing the territories in 1967. He said he considered all of East Jerusalem to be the capital of his future state, and would not accept a single neighborhood, like Beit Hanina or Abu Dis, as some have suggested.
Mr. Kerry initially set a nine-month target for negotiating a peace treaty. Although a comprehensive agreement is not expected in that time frame, the United States is trying to complete the framework accord by the end of next month, when the nine-month period expires. Separately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in an interview broadcast Friday night on Israeli television that some Jewish settlements in the West Bank would not be part of his state if an agreement was finalized. “Everyone understands that,” he said, though it was a rare concession for him to make publicly, in Hebrew, to a domestic audience. “I’m going to make sure that that will be very limited.”
At a meeting at the White House on Monday, Mr. Obama had pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to accept the framework, a senior administration official said. The statements from the two leaders come at a critical juncture in the nine-month peace talks Mr. Kerry initiated last summer. An American team is finalizing a framework of core principles for a final-status agreement that would extend the talks past their April 29 expiration date, and Mr. Abbas is scheduled to visit the White House to discuss the plan March 17.
On Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu made an uncharacteristically enthusiastic pitch for a peace accord with the Palestinians, saying it would enable Israel to strengthen ties with its Arab neighbors and “catapult the region forward” on issues like health, energy and education. After spending the week in crisis-diplomacy mode on the conflict in Ukraine, Mr. Kerry took a 1,500-mile detour Friday morning from Rome to Aqaba, Jordan, for a two-hour meeting with the king, before heading back to Washington. Neither Mr. Kerry nor King Abdullah made any public statements after the meeting, one of a series Mr. Kerry has held in recent months with leaders throughout the Arab world, where skepticism over the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace remain high.
Mr. Netanyahu spoke of working to forge a peace deal “in the coming days, in the coming weeks,” suggesting that he had at least listened to Mr. Obama’s argument. Mr. Abbas denied a Palestinian newspaper report that the Obama administration had presented copies of the framework this week to Mr. Netanyahu and the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, during their visits to Washington. Palestinian leaders expressed serious doubts about the prospective framework in recent days, criticizing the Obama administration for adopting the Israeli position on key issues, particularly the recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Unlike some of his senior aides, Mr. Abbas did not say that he expected the talks to fall apart when the framework was presented. But during the meeting with Fatah students at his compound in Ramallah in the West Bank Thursday night, he seemed to take a harder line than usual on the issue of borders. He did not mention the concept of land swaps, under which most experts on the peace process expect large settlements housing perhaps 80 percent of the nearly 600,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be included in Israel, with equivalent amounts of territory now in Israel drawn into the Palestinian state.
“The negotiations resumed on the basis of the 1967 lines — thus, we emphasized from the beginning that Israeli settlement inside the 1967 lines is illegitimate,” Mr. Abbas said in remarks broadcast on Palestinian television and published by Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
“When we sign the agreement, the Israelis should start gradual withdrawal. After the specific timeline, there must be no single Israeli in the Palestinian state.”
Regarding the estimated five million Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Mr. Abbas said some should be allowed to return to Israel and become citizens, while others should receive compensation whether they stay where they are or move to a different country.
Mustafa Alani, an independent analyst in Saudi Arabia, where President Obama is scheduled to visit later this month, said Arab leaders had watched with dismay as the American-brokered negotiations focused on Israeli concerns over security in the Jordan Valley portion of the West Bank, and on Mr. Netanyahu’s newly elevated demand for recognition as a Jewish state.
“For us the most important issue is how far Mr. Obama is ready and able to pressure Israelis for concessions,” Mr. Alani said. Arab leaders “were ready to put pressure on the Palestinians, but they were expecting similar pressure from the Americans on the Israelis, and they don’t see this is happening. We look at Mr. Obama as somebody selling dreams, not reality.”