Rice urges more Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
BRUSSELS, Belgium – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Palestinians on Monday to quickly resume peace talks with Israel, suspended in protest over an Israeli military offensive that killed more than 100 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the violence, she said a deal to end the six-decade conflict is still possible before President Bush leaves office.
“I’m hopeful that we can get through this current situation and get back to negotiations,” Rice said as she headed to the Mideast for meetings that amount to a rescue mission for a peace push Bush launched last fall.
Gaza and the Palestinian leadership split that underlies the crisis are the largest potential deal-killers for Bush’s goal to sign a peace treaty before the close of his term in January. The crisis comes on top of the usual list of obstacles that have spiked previous peace attempts.
“I continue to believe that they can get to a deal by the end of the year if everyone’s got the will to do it,” Rice said.
Palestinian leaders pulled out of peace talks, at least temporarily, after Israeli troops, tanks and warplanes launched a major weekend sweep against militant Palestinians who use the tiny Gaza territory to launch rocket attacks on Israel.
Photographs of dead and injured Palestinian children blanketed Arab media on Sunday and Monday amid stern international warnings to Israel to avoid what Palestinians and others say is the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Israel pulled its forces out of the territory Monday even as Israel’s defense chief warned that a larger assault may be in the offing.
The top U.S. diplomat condemned the rocket attacks and blamed Hamas militants for initiating the current round of violence. She said she will urge that the talks begin again fast, but set no deadline.
Rice declined to call for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, but said all violence must stop. Without criticizing Israel, Rice suggested she would be blunt about the stakes involved in further military action.
“The issue of the loss of innocent life is one that needs to be very much in the center of everyone’s mind … and one always has to think in carrying out military operations about the day after. So those are the discussions that I’ll have with the Israelis,” she said.
Rice spent the weekend on the phone, talking to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli and Egyptian officials.
Her first Mideast stop is in Egypt for hastily arranged talks on securing Egypt’s small border with Gaza and improving the flow of aid to the densely populated tract that was sealed off for months by Israel in retaliation for the rocket and mortar fire. Unemployment is rampant and basic goods scarce, and medical workers warned of a humanitarian crisis even before the Israeli military assault.
Rice will raise with the Egyptians both the humanitarian needs of Gazans and smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza, deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington.
The turmoil overshadowed Rice’s previously scheduled visit this week to Israel and the West Bank, headquarters of the moderate Palestinian government backed by the United States and held up by Rice and others as a potential model for eventual Palestinian statehood.
Gaza is the smaller, poorer of two Arab tracts that would form an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Saturday death toll was by far the highest since the second Palestinian uprising against Israel erupted in late 2000. In Ramallah, home to Abbas’ government, thousands of schoolchildren demonstrated against Israel. Some accused Abbas of being an Israeli agent, and protesters threw stones and cars, burned tires and forced shopkeepers to close their stores.
Arab outrage over Israel’s offensive in Gaza threatened to swamp what promise remained in the U.S.-backed peace framework, which has featured regular secret meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators but no public breakthroughs. Israeli housing activity, Palestinian militant violence and police inaction already had undermined confidence on both sides following the celebratory mood of Bush’s November peace conference at Annapolis, Md.
Israel said it wants to continue negotiations, but suggested it also may launch a full-scale re-invasion of the Gaza territory it abandoned three years ago in a first step toward ending defensive occupation of lands the Palestinians claim for the state.
Rice acknowledged the sensitivities and frustrations on both sides but tried to minimize the crisis and its potential consequence.
“We are three months into trying to resolve a conflict that has been going on for 50 years, so it’s going to have its ups and downs,” Rice said.
Israeli ground troops pulled out of northern Gaza before daybreak Monday, following the offensive that left 117 Palestinians dead. Roughly half those killed were civilians. One Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket, and two Israeli soldiers were killed.
The Gaza crisis revealed the limitations of the strategy of Israel and the United States to focus peace efforts on the West Bank while cutting off the militant government in Gaza. Rice, however, said Hamas militants pledged to the destruction of Israel can stop the momentum for peace “only if they are allowed to.”
Abbas has ruled from the West Bank since his Hamas rivals violently seized control of Gaza in June. But the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza has threatened to unleash a backlash against him in the West Bank. Israel, meanwhile, is under heavy internal pressure to reinvade.
The crisis also recalled Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, when civilian deaths built huge international pressure on Israel to pull back, and the Bush administration was perceived as running interference for its ally’s military offensive.
Rice said the two situations are very different, but her care in describing the humanitarian need in Gaza suggested she is aware of how U.S. actions will be judged.