JERUSALEM – The special U.S. envoy tasked with re-energizing stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians met Thursday with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal opponent of the negotiations.
The meeting was the first between Netanyahu and George Mitchell since Netanyahu was designated to lead Israel's next government.
The Obama administration has dispatched Mitchell to the region for the second time in its first month, an indication of the new U.S. president's determination to press a resolution of the decades-old conflict. Hillary Rodham Clinton is due in the area next week on her first trip since being appointed the new U.S. secretary of state.
Netanyahu thinks the latest round of U.S.-backed peace negotiations was a waste of time and wants to promote Palestinian prosperity instead of Palestinian statehood.
Mitchell arrived in Israel on Thursday from Turkey and met with moderate Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
On his first trip last month, Mitchell promised a vigorous push for peace but offered no glimpse of how the Obama administration planned to proceed. A U.S. official said he was not expected to make public policy statements this time, either. Such statements might await Clinton's visit or the formation of Netanyahu's government.
Netanyahu knows the international community would like to see a moderate coalition in Israel. But his efforts to woo moderate parties that would trade land for peace have not been going well.
Livni's Kadima Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's Labor Party have rejected his overtures, in part because of his opposition to peacemaking. Netanyahu's alternative is to team up with other nationalist and religious parties in a narrow alliance that could easily break apart over conflicting domestic agendas or international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians.
One of Mitchell's immediate goals is to shore up a shaky, informal cease-fire that ended Israel's bruising offensive against Gaza militants last month. Egyptian officials have been trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza.
Low-level violence has marred the cease-fire. On Thursday, militants fired two rockets at southern Israel and Israel later sent aircraft to raid southern Gaza. Hamas said the aircraft targeted smuggling tunnels. No injuries were reported in the rocket attacks or the air strike.
Mitchell heads to the West Bank on Friday to meet with officials of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. The two sides will also discuss the need to rebuild Gaza and efforts to reconcile feuding Palestinian factions.
The Palestinians hope to raise $2.8 billion at an international donor's conference in Egypt on Monday, where the U.S. is expected to pledge $900 million.
The success of reconstruction efforts will depend largely on Israel's agreement to reopen border crossings into Gaza. Truce talks recently deadlocked over Israel's insistence that Hamas release a long-held Israeli soldier.
A power-sharing deal between Hamas and the moderate West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also seen as key to reconstruction. The international community shuns the violently anti-Israel Hamas.
In a report obtained by The Associated Press, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad asks donors to channel aid "first and foremost" through his West Bank government. His plan does not mention Hamas, which unveiled its own aid proposal Wednesday.
Other options for donors include having international aid agencies take the lead.
Fayyad's report says rebuilding Gaza's infrastructure, including homes, would cost about $500 million (391 million euros). Private sector damage amounts to about $412 million (322 million euros), including the destruction of nearly 15 percent of Gaza's cultivated land and damage to or destruction of more than 700 private businesses and factories.
Hamas and Fatah representatives have been meeting in Cairo this week for Egyptian-mediated talks. But earlier rounds of reconciliation efforts failed, and the two sides remain bitterly divided.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090226/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians
Topic: US envoy, Netanyahu meet on peace efforts (Read 393 times)