Evoking the U.S. shuttle diplomacy of decades past, Secretary of State John Kerry is making his third trip to the Middle East in a span of just two weeks in a fresh bid to restart long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Though expectations are low for any breakthrough on Kerry’s trip, which begins Saturday, his meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders represent some of the Obama administration’s most sustained efforts at engagement, a renewed determination in a part of the world that has frustrated American administrations for the past six decades.
“His diplomacy will be based on what he hears from the parties,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday. Kerry, she said, will be making clear that both sides have to want to get back to the negotiating table “and that they’ve also got to recognize— both parties — that compromises and sacrifices are going to have to be made if we’re going to be able to help.”
Kerry is going at a precarious time. Overnight and into Wednesday, Israel and Gaza militants engaged in the heaviest fighting since a cease-fire was declared in November. The militants fired several rockets into southern Israel, and Israel responded with its first airstrike in Gaza since the fighting subsided. No injuries were reported on either side.
Kerry had planned to leave Monday for talks in London and then South Korea, China and Japan. But officials said he moved up his departure to Saturday for a first stop in Turkey, where he’ll seek to build on recent efforts by that nation and Israel to repair ties and coordinate on stemming violence in Syria. Kerry then travels to Jerusalem and to Ramallah in the West Bank, which he visited with Obama last month before returning to Israel a second time.
U.S. officials say Kerry is primarily interested in gauging what the Israelis and the Palestinians are willing to do to restart direct negotiations that have been mostly frozen for the past four-and-a-half years. He’ll meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Trying to avoid raising expectations unrealistically, Nuland said Kerry’s trip isn’t the start of a new era of shuttle diplomacy, a concept that got its start with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during his regular travels back-and-forth to end the 1973 Mideast War and secure peace between Israel and some of its neighbors. Similar efforts took place under later secretaries James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Condoleezza Rice.
Looking for an elusive path back to negotiations, U.S. officials said the Obama administration is exploring security guarantees for the Jordan Valley, a section of the West Bank that stretches along the border with Jordan.
Israel has long demanded the guarantees as part of any treaty establishing an independent Palestine, though the issue has been overshadowed by more sensitive matters.
Although Palestinians have a measure of self-rule in other areas, the Jordan Valley is part of the 60 percent of the West Bank still under full Israeli control nearly two decades after interim peace accords granted the Palestinians autonomy elsewhere.
Netanyahu has said he wants Israel to maintain some sort of security presence in the valley as part of any agreement. Israel fears an independent Palestine without a sufficient international or Israeli presence could lead to a buildup of military equipment and extremists along whatever becomes the final boundary — and lead to more conflict.
One idea floated in the past included joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols of the mostly desert area home to some 60,000 Palestinians.
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