Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed in a meeting in Washington, D.C., this week to spend the next nine months trying to work through their thorniest differences and forge a deal to end their six-decade-long conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was cautiously optimistic that a peace deal could be reached, after meeting with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat in Washington. “We have had constructive and positive meetings,” said Kerry. “We are hopeful, but we cannot be naïve,” said Livni. Negotiations will continue in mid-August, as part of a nine-month timetable to reach a deal on major “final status” issues, including borders, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the status of Jerusalem.
That the two sides were even in the same room is a testament to Kerry’s “doggedness,” said Roger Cohen in The New York Times. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deeply distrusts Israel’s hawkish prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has been reluctant to open talks with his government. Perhaps he recognized that Netanyahu’s release of 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of a pre-talks deal is “not the action of a man unserious about final-status negotiations.”
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