European Forum

Jordan hosts Israel-Palestinian talks

For the first time in sixteen months Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are set to meet in the Jordanian capital Amman. Jordan is hosting the talks as a part of efforts to resume direct peace negotiations between the two sides. The Foreign Minister of Jordan Nasser Judeh will guide the sessions. The Israelis and Palestinians will meet bilaterally as well as with the Quartet of Middle East mediators - the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. According to Mohammed Kayed, the Jordanian foreign minister spokesman, the meeting is a serious effort to find a common ground between the two sides and help restart peace talks.

Since September 2010 direct peace talks between Israel and Palestine fell apart when an Israeli freeze on the new West Bank construction expired and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to renew it. A year later the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made a bid for the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state, a move Israel called premature without direct talks that address its long-standing security concerns.

The Israeli-Palestinian meeting in Jordan will be the first since the negotiations broke off in 2010. According to Xavier Abu Eid, a spokesman for the negotiations affairs department of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the talks will however not be the start of a negotiation session. Instead, the meeting will hopefully be a springboard to return to negotiations.

The new discussions were welcomed by members of the Quartet. “We are hopeful that this direct exchange can help move us forward on the pathway proposed by the Quartet”, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said in a statement last Sunday. The Quartet had said talks between the two sides must resume before the end of January 2012.

However, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat cautioned the meetings do not constitute a resumption of peace negotiations. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”, Erekat said, “needs to freeze the construction of settlements and accept the ’67 outline for a two-state solution before we return to the negotiations table.”

Since the removal of the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and the power vacuum that emerged in the Middle East, Jordan’s King Abdullah has taken a more active role in trying to bridge the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians. In November 2011 King Abdullah made a rare visit to the Palestinian political capital of Ramallah in the West Bank followed by a meeting in Amman a weak later with Israel President Shimon Peres.

Sources: Aljazeera, BBC, CNN, The Economist, UPI.com