On Sept. 22, President Obama summoned the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to an urgent three-way meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and declared, “It is past time to talk about starting negotiations; it is time to move forward.”
To that end, he asked both sides to send diplomats to Washington for intensive talks and directed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to report back to him in a month about where things stood.
That deadline arrived Thursday, and Mrs. Clinton went to the White House with what several administration officials acknowledge was a meager report: a little progress has been made, they said, but in some respects the atmosphere for talks is actually worse now than it was a month ago.
“The secretary advised the president that challenges remain as the United States continues to work with both sides to relaunch negotiations in an atmosphere in which they can succeed,” the White House said in a background report about the meeting that was provided to reporters.
The report repeats, almost verbatim, the signs of progress that Mr. Obama cited in his remarks a month ago in New York.
Israel has expressed a willingness to curtail construction of settlements, though it has not agreed to a total halt, as Mr. Obama has demanded.
The Palestinian Authority has strengthened its security and institutions, but not as much as the administration thinks it should.
Mr. Obama’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, has been grinding away on issues like the configuration of Israel’s borders, which could trip up peace negotiations even before they start.
But his work has been complicated by a furor over a report detailing war crimes in the Gaza war last winter.
Israel has bitterly criticized the document, known as the Goldstone report, which was endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that advancing the report would end any chance of peace talks.
The issuing of the report also politically weakened President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, because he initially bowed to American pressure to accept a delay in forwarding it to the Security Council, before reversing himself. A strong reaction among Palestinians prompted Mr. Abbas’s about-face. In her meeting with Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton pledged that Mr. Mitchell would keep at it.
“This is a treading-water report,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator.
“Once he clears health care, and once the Afghanistan review is done,” Mr. Miller said, “Obama can revisit this issue.”
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