Abbas meets Israeli official
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with Israel’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister here on Sunday, the highest-level talks between Palestinian and Israeli officials in nearly a year.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that urgent measures were needed to resurrect stagnant Middle East peace talks if there’s to be hope of Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully in their own, neighboring countries. “I think that time is working against those who believe in a two-state solution,” she said.
Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told reporters the meeting, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum conference here, had gone well and was a “preparation and an opening, particularly on the economic side,” after 11 months without a high-level meeting.
But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem suggested it was unlikely Sunday’s talks would lead to renewed negotiations. Olmert derided Abbas as a “powerless” and “helpless” leader incapable of leading the Palestinian people to peace.
The conflicting events came on the eve of Olmert’s first official trip to Washington where he is expected to face political pressure not to isolate Abbas, whom American officials are working to bolster in his ongoing power struggle with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government.
Underscoring Abbas’ difficult position, Palestinian police in Gaza foiled what they said was another apparent assassination plot against a top official allied with Abbas.
Police said they discovered a 150-pound roadside bomb on the road Rashid Abu Shbak, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s security services, takes from his south Gaza City home to work. The bomb was discovered just before Shbak left his house.
The discovery came one day after Abbas’ intelligence chief was seriously injured in an explosion in an elevator shaft at his headquarters in Gaza.
The apparent assassination attempts followed several gunbattles between Abbas’ Fatah and Hamas, raising concerns that the factional fighting could spin out of control. A statement from Fatah called the attacks a “clear conspiracy” against the party, though members stopped short of overtly blaming Hamas.
Nabil Shaath, a Fatah legislator and former Palestinian information minister, told reporters in Egypt that it was too early to let accusations fly.
“I’ve seen too many detective movies in my life,” he said. “When it looks so much like Hamas, you have to doubt that it is Hamas.”
Israeli leaders are skeptical of Abbas’ ability to lead peace talks. Two months ago, Foreign Minister Livni dismissed Abbas as irrelevant. On Sunday, Olmert suggested that there was little point in working with Abbas because his once-dominant Fatah party had lost power in the election.
“Mahmoud Abbas was deprived of all his powers,” Olmert said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.” “He is powerless. He is helpless. He’s unable to even stop the minimal terror activities amongst the Palestinians. How can he seriously negotiate with Israel and take – assume responsibility for the most major, fundamental issues that are in controversy between us and them?”
The United States has joined Israel in shunning Hamas, but is trying to shore up Abbas. American officials are expected to press Olmert to work with Abbas during Olmert’s visit to Washington, where he will meet with Bush and deliver an address to Congress.
But the Israeli prime minister is also expected to begin outlining his campaign pledge to unilaterally set Israel’s borders by absorbing more West Bank land while removing thousands of Jewish settlers from larger portions of the occupied territory.