The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, met on Monday with Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, in the Sinai resort of Sharm el Sheik, and the Obama administration’s envoy arrived in the region amid final preparations for the start of indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The talks, expected in days, will be the first in more than a year. But the atmosphere in the region was hardly enthusiastic, with Israeli officials expressing skepticism about the prospects of a breakthrough and Palestinian officials warning Israel against taking any steps that could torpedo the talks.
The so-called proximity talks, to be brokered by the American envoy, George J. Mitchell, were delayed in March after the Israeli government announced plans for new Jewish housing in contested East Jerusalem. The top leaders on both sides have been taking care to avoid statements that could be deemed provocative; nevertheless, a certain dissonance remains evident.
Dan Meridor, the Israeli minister for intelligence affairs, said Monday that “the real talks will be direct.” The idea of proximity talks was “quite strange,” he told Army Radio, after successive Israeli governments had held direct talks with the Palestinians on and off for the past 16 years.
American officials said the purpose of Mr. Mitchell’s shuttling between the Israeli and Palestinian sides would be to get them into face-to-face talks as soon as possible.
But the Palestinians insist that there will be no resumption of direct talks without a complete settlement construction freeze by Israel, including any additional Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as their future capital. Israel is committed to a partial freeze in the West Bank settlements until late September, but refuses to include East Jerusalem, where it claims sovereignty.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Army Radio that Israel must refrain from unilateral steps over the next four months, like building new settlements or evicting Palestinians.
Adding to the sense of mutual distrust, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said Monday that there was “an unprecedented wave of incitement” coming out of the Palestinian Authority, including the Palestinian boycott of some Israeli-produced goods, which he said violated a 1994 economic agreement.
The boycott, which focuses on goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is part of a new Palestinian effort at nonviolent resistance. The Palestinian Authority’s minister of economy, Hassan Abu Libdeh, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Monday that the campaign was not intended to be anti-Israeli, but was in part aimed at helping Palestinian consumers to distinguish between “products that come from the illegal settlements and those legal Israeli products that are imported in accordance with the economic agreement” in 1994.
Refusing to make such a distinction, Mr. Ayalon said that images of the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and others “happily” burning Israeli products reminded him of darker periods in Jewish history, mentioning Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. During that episode in 1938, Nazis attacked Jews and burned synagogues across Germany and Austria in what many regard as the start of the Holocaust.
“Before the start of the talks,” Mr. Ayalon said, “the Palestinian Authority must decide if it is a partner for true peace and stop the ongoing incitement and boycotts against Israel.”
Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, added that the Palestinian Authority was “committed” to the economic agreement and that to the Palestinians, there was a “huge difference” between products produced in the settlements and products from Israel.
Mr. Ayalon made his comments at a news conference that Israel’s Foreign Ministry was host to, issuing a report documenting a hundred cases of places or events named for people held responsible for deadly acts of terrorism against Israelis. The report was released by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group that monitors the Palestinian news media and which has also sponsored a $100,000 television advertisement campaign on Washington television channels highlighting its findings.
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