WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will invite the Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to the White House in the coming weeks for separate talks on moving forward with the Middle East peace process, the White House said Tuesday.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president was issuing the invitations in hopes of building on talks he held earlier in the day with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a steadfast Arab ally in the Middle East, which has made peace with Israel, as has Egypt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be asked to sit down with the president in the coming weeks, Gibbs said. No dates were set. Abbas runs the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, but faces a strong challenge for overall authority from the increasingly powerful and militant Hamas faction that runs the Gaza Strip and is relentless in calling for the destruction of Israel.
After meeting the Jordanian monarch, Obama said he expected Israelis and Palestinians to make “gestures of good faith” within months to revive the languishing Mideast peace process.
Obama said he remained committed to pushing for a two-state solution: separate Israeli and Palestinian states existing side-by- side in peace.
Former President George W. Bush also had sought a framework for such a deal, but it did not happen before the end of his presidency.
Obama said his administration and special Mideast envoy George Mitchell had not finished listening to both sides and wanted to give Netanyahu’s new Israeli government more time to formulate policy. But he said all sides in the conflict must overcome the grip of cynicism.
