UNITED NATIONS — U.S. officials scrambled Saturday to find a compromise to a dispute threatening new Middle East peace talks, with Israel preparing to resume construction on disputed West Bank land and Palestinians threatening to walk out of negotiations in protest.
During a speech Saturday at the U.N. General Assembly meeting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there will be no peace deal unless the Jewish state stops settlement construction in areas the Palestinians claim for their future state.
“Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements,” Abbas said in his address at the annual ministerial meeting.
Despite pressure from the U.S., United Nations and European Union, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to extend Israel’s 10-month partial moratorium on West Bank construction past midnight tonight.
Both sides began bracing for possible fallout from a breakdown in talks.
“It’s still in play,” said one Israeli government official Saturday who was not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing meetings in New York to find a resolution. “There’s an intensive effort. But at this stage, I can’t tell you if there’s something that will be produced.”
Abbas reaffirmed the Palestinian commitment to try to reach a deal.
“We have decided to enter into final status negotiations,” he told ministers and diplomats. “We will continue to exert every effort to reach an agreement for Palestinian-Israeli peace within one year in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy . . . and the vision of the two-state solution.”
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said U.S. special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell met with Abbas for about half an hour Saturday.
“We remain engaged with both sides,” he said.
Senior Palestinian officials said one proposal being considered was that Israel would resume building new projects only in some areas, probably in communities close to the Israeli border and likely to be retained by Israel in a future deal as part of a land swap.
But the officials added that at least two other scenarios were also under discussion, including a three-month extension of the moratorium or a conditional extension in which the Palestinians would agree to some “exceptions.”
The Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
