WASHINGTON — The United States will begin this week to present potential solutions to disagreements between Israel and the Palestinians as an April deadline for a peace deal approaches, a senior State Department official close to negotiations said Tuesday.
Secretary of State John Kerry will test U.S. proposals during meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, set to begin Thursday when he returns to the region. The goal is an outline to guide the most intensive and difficult phase of the direct negotiations Kerry prodded the two sides to begin last summer.
Kerry set a nine-month deadline that would produce a final peace deal that would establish an independent Palestinian state by late April. The framework agreement at issue now would commit the two sides to the parameters of a final deal.
Details would be come over the coming months, but the outline would be a milestone that shows the largely secretive discussions are worthwhile.
“The framework is a basis from which one could negotiate a final peace treaty because the outline or the guidelines of what the final deal would look like would be agreed upon,” the senior U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview Kerry’s discussions in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The official said Kerry does not expect any “breakthroughs” this week, but does want the two sides to agree to the framework terms fairly soon. Those terms would govern talks on the thorniest issues, such as the borders of a future Palestinian state on land Israel now occupies, and make it hard for either side to backtrack.
All sides have acknowledged that the ambitious timeline to resolve the decades-old conflict could slip, but Israelis and Palestinian negotiators have kept their word to remain at the table for talks that have now gone about 20 rounds.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have not met directly since talks resumed in July. A face-to-face meeting, possibly with Kerry as moderator, would be a significant sign of progress. The senior U.S. official said such a meeting would likely follow agreement on the framework terms.
