Israel prepares for peace summit with U.S.
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Top U.S. officials have arrived in Israel in recent days to begin preliminary negotiations ahead of the direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks set to begin in Washington on September 2.
The officials are Daniel Shapiro, head of the Middle East and North Africa division at the National Security Council, and David Hale, deputy to special Mideast envoy George Mitchell, sources close to Israeli government told Xinhua.
Senior American diplomat Dennis Ross had also arrived in Israel to formulate a solution for the settlement construction freeze issue, Israeli Channel 10 television reported on Thursday.
Israel has maintained routine telephone contact with the United States ever since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launching of the direct negotiations. The main task now facing Shapiro and Hale is to ease tensions between both sides and prevent last-minute crisis.
Both officials are due to meet with lawyer Yitzhak Molcho, a special adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and head of the Israeli negotiating team, and then with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Netanyahu on Thursday evening began assembling the Israeli negotiating team that will travel to Washington, said an announcement issued by the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.
"Netanyahu will assemble a small negotiating team that will be under his direct supervision, in order to allow for thorough, serious and speedy talks," read the announcement.
While Yitzhak Molcho has already been appointed to lead negotiations on behalf of Israel, the final composition of the Israeli delegation to Washington is yet to be announced. The Israeli team is set to include representatives from various government ministries.
Netanyahu has reportedly undertaken an initiative prior to the launch of the direct talks by suggesting to the U.S. administration on Thursday that he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hold face-to-face meetings on a bi-weekly basis.
These meetings would serve both leaders to arrive at covert understandings and formulate principles for the issues being negotiated. Small negotiation teams would then work out the details and record the understandings.
"Serious negotiations in the Middle East mean only direct, quiet and consecutive talks between the two leaders on the key issues," Netanyahu was quoted by the daily Ha'aretz as saying recently.
Meanwhile, the issue of the Israeli construction freeze in the West Bank, set to expire on September 26, hangs like a dark cloud over the Washington summit.
Netanyahu is currently facing immense pressure from within his cabinet, right-wing coalition partners and Jewish settlers' leaders, to keep true to his word and renew the construction activity.
But Palestinian officials have stressed on numerous occasions that renewing construction, as Netanyahu has vowed to do, would bring peace negotiations to an immediate halt.
The Israeli prime minister, fearing an American backlash in case the direct talks break down over the construction freeze debate, is reportedly weighing his options.
According to Jewish settlers' council, Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak plan to enforce a "quiet freeze," in which the moratorium would be declared officially over, but Barak would not sign construction permits brought for his approval.
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