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| Kerry Says It’s ‘Reality Check Time’ in Stalled Mideast Talks | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| RABAT, Morocco — Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the Obama administration planned to re-evaluate its approach to Middle East peacemaking and decide whether it was worth continuing its effort in light of the inability of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to make progress. | RABAT, Morocco — Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the Obama administration planned to re-evaluate its approach to Middle East peacemaking and decide whether it was worth continuing its effort in light of the inability of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to make progress. |
| In response to a question while visiting Morocco, Mr. Kerry said that he would return to Washington to confer with President Obama before deciding on the next steps. He said it was “reality-check time.” | |
| “There are limits to the amount of time and effort that the United States can spend if the parties themselves are unwilling to take constructive steps in order to be able to move forward,” he said. | “There are limits to the amount of time and effort that the United States can spend if the parties themselves are unwilling to take constructive steps in order to be able to move forward,” he said. |
| “We intend to evaluate,” he added. “Both sides say they want to continue. Neither party has said they have called it off. But we are not going to sit there indefinitely. It is not an open-ended effort.” | “We intend to evaluate,” he added. “Both sides say they want to continue. Neither party has said they have called it off. But we are not going to sit there indefinitely. It is not an open-ended effort.” |
| Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been at odds in recent days over Israel’s refusal to release a batch of Palestinian prisoners and over the Palestinian Authority’s applications to join a number of international organizations. Neither side informed the Americans before taking the steps, officials said. | |
| Some critics have asserted that Mr. Kerry has devoted too much attention to pursuing Middle East peace at the expense of other pressing foreign policy issues. | Some critics have asserted that Mr. Kerry has devoted too much attention to pursuing Middle East peace at the expense of other pressing foreign policy issues. |
| Mr. Kerry defended his efforts, saying that the nearly nine months he has spent trying to encourage serious talks in the Middle East were not wasted because the parties had narrowed their differences on divisive matters. | |
| But he acknowledged that the United States faced an array of foreign policy challenges, including in Ukraine, Iran and Syria. | |
| “We have an enormous amount on the plate,” he said. | “We have an enormous amount on the plate,” he said. |
| Yair Lapid, the centrist Israeli finance minister, said Friday that the events of the past day “raised serious doubts” about whether Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was really interested in reaching an agreement. He was referring to a broad new list of demands that the Palestinian news agency Maan said on Thursday was being presented by Palestinian negotiators as a condition for extending the talks. | Yair Lapid, the centrist Israeli finance minister, said Friday that the events of the past day “raised serious doubts” about whether Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was really interested in reaching an agreement. He was referring to a broad new list of demands that the Palestinian news agency Maan said on Thursday was being presented by Palestinian negotiators as a condition for extending the talks. |
| “It looks more like a deliberate provocation aimed at blowing up the talks,” Mr. Lapid, whose Yesh Atid Party has backed the negotiations, wrote on his Facebook page. “No Israeli will conduct negotiations at any price.” | “It looks more like a deliberate provocation aimed at blowing up the talks,” Mr. Lapid, whose Yesh Atid Party has backed the negotiations, wrote on his Facebook page. “No Israeli will conduct negotiations at any price.” |
| Michael Herzog, a retired Israeli general serving as a consultant to the negotiations, said Friday that Mr. Abbas’s international gambit “pushed us into a deep crisis.” | Michael Herzog, a retired Israeli general serving as a consultant to the negotiations, said Friday that Mr. Abbas’s international gambit “pushed us into a deep crisis.” |
| Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economy minister and the leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, responded to reports that the Palestinians were threatening to have Israel prosecuted at the International Criminal Court by revealing that he had begun preparations to bring claims against the Palestinians. Yediot Aharonot, a leading Israeli newspaper, reported Friday that Mr. Bennett had consulted international law experts and determined that rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and payments by the Palestinian Authority to prisoners could be grounds for legal action. | |
| “I hear Abu Mazen saying that if there is no prisoner release he will go to The Hague, so I’m telling him: Go, you’ll have lawsuits waiting for you there,” Mr. Bennett was quoted as saying, using Mr. Abbas’s nickname. “We want to have a bullet in the barrel against Abu Mazen.” | |
| The new Palestinian demands, according to Maan, included a written commitment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recognizing a Palestinian state along the border lines from before the 1967 war, with East Jerusalem as the capital; the release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners; and an end to Israeli travel, import, export, fishing and farming restrictions in the Gaza Strip. | |
| Israeli officials involved in the talks said they could not agree to such conditions because they were final status issues that need to be negotiated.. Several Palestinian leaders were quoted in the local news media Friday as saying the Maan report was not accurate, but they declined to specify what new demands had been made. | |
| On Friday, politicians on each side of the disagreement sought to blame the other for the breakdown. | |
| “Every time there is a proposal on the table, whether Israeli or American or American-Israeli, that obligates the Palestinians to make a decision, they disappear,” Tzachi Hanegbi, a member of Parliament from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said on Israeli radio. “The Palestinians have a deep problem, a leadership problem,” he said. “They are, unfortunately, incapable of making a decision that entails a historic compromise.” | |
| But Muhammad Shtayyeh, a senior aide to Mr. Abbas and a former member of the negotiating team, said the crisis stemmed from Israel’s insistence that a fourth batch of prisoners, promised as part of the nine-month talks that started last summer, would be freed only if the Palestinians agreed to extend negotiations for another nine months. | |
| “What is happening now is that Netanyahu is trying to get us to pay five times for the same thing,” Mr. Shtayyeh said. “Talks are not about extensions, talks are about intentions.” | |
| An Israeli official with knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of Mr. Kerry’s ban on discussing them publicly, said that he did not believe that Washington would really withdraw from the process. | |
| “I don’t think they’re going to take a back seat,” the official said. “For the time being I expect the U.S. will continue to be very much involved. They may draw some conclusions from what happened in terms of how their role should be played, but they will continue to play a very important role.” |