RAMALLAH, West Bank — The United States’ top Mideast envoy failed to bridge wide gaps between Israelis and Palestinians as he ended his most intensive attempt yet Friday, raising questions over President Barack Obama’s efforts to revive peacemaking.
The deadlock could scuttle hopes for a meeting between Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
The key disputes are over Israeli settlement expansion and whether peace talks should begin where they left off under Netanyahu’s predecessors.
Israel has balked at a U.S. demand that it freeze settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Under a U.S.-sponsored plan from 2003, Israel is required to freeze all such construction.
Instead, Netanyahu wants to continue building about 3,000 housing units, while offering to curtail other construction for a period of several months.
Abbas insists on a freeze, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said after the Palestinian president met Friday with the U.S. envoy, George Mitchell.
The Palestinians also demand that negotiations resume on the same terms as previous rounds, led by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert. This would include Israel’s willingness to discuss all so-called core issues, including a partition of Jerusalem. Netanyahu has said Jerusalem is off-limits.
Over four days, Mitchell met twice with Abbas and four times with Netanyahu, including twice Friday before Mitchell left the region. A senior Israeli official said that wide gaps remained but would not comment on the meetings.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration would keep pushing for a peace deal.
“I guarantee you that President Obama and I are very patient and very determined,” she said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
However, she also indicated that the administration would not try to impose a solution.
“We are going to do all we can to persuade, cajole, encourage the parties themselves to make that agreement. The United States cannot make it. The Arab nations cannot make it. It is up to the Palestinians and Israelis,” she said.
