Mideast talks off to a tense start

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators Wednesday launched their first full-fledged peace talks since 2001, but the session was marred by tensions over an Israeli construction project in East Jerusalem and fresh rocket attacks by Palestinian militants based in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s plans to build about 300 homes in a neighborhood it calls Har Homa have drawn denunciations from Palestinian officials and prompted calls to boycott Wednesday’s formal start of a promised yearlong effort to reach a peace agreement.

Palestinian negotiators attended but used the opportunity to criticize the Israeli plans anew. Officials on both sides described the mood as tense.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the Israeli project threatened to undermine hopes of reviving the peace process after the U.S.-sponsored conference last month in Annapolis, Md.

“Either you choose a path of settlement and incursion and business as usual, or you choose peace,” Erekat said the Palestinians told the Israeli negotiators. “With this, you are destroying us.”

The two teams, led by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei, met in a Jerusalem hotel for about an hour and a half. Livni and Korei left without speaking to reporters.

“They expressed their concerns. We also expressed our concerns,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “What’s important is that there’s a commitment to deal with these issues.”

Israel’s immediate concerns center mostly on security in the West Bank and Gaza, from which militants launched more than 20 Kassam rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel on Wednesday.

The day’s talks were expected to focus on setting the framework and schedule for coming negotiations over central issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Israeli officials said the two teams agreed to meet again after the Muslim holiday of Eid al- Adha next week.

The latest barrage of rocket fire into Israel by Gaza-based militants came a day after Israeli tanks and troops pressed into the southern part of the strip, killing at least five people in what the army said was a continuing effort to curtail the attacks.

The burst of rockets Wednesday prompted the mayor of Sderot, a town that has been a frequent target, to resign. Mayor Eli Moyal said the Israeli government had done too little to protect his town from persistent salvos of Kassam rockets and mortar rounds.

“Everyone knows we’ve been abandoned,” Moyal told Israel Radio.

Taken together, the construction dispute and rocket attacks underscored the difficulties that await any serious attempt to end the decades-old conflict with a negotiated peace.

Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas vowed last month to try to reach a peace settlement by the end of 2008.

The two sides plan a parallel effort to put in place the first stage of the U.S.-backed peace blueprint known as the road map. That document, which lays out a step-by-step path to Palestinian statehood, has been sidelined by the failure of both sides to fulfill preliminary requirements.

Under the peace plan, Israel is obligated to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and dismantle illegal outposts built after March 2001. The Palestinians are committed to act against armed groups that have carried out hundreds of attacks on Israelis since the latest conflict broke out in 2000.

But expectations are extremely low here that Olmert and Abbas, both politically weak, can forge a lasting peace during the next year. Many on both sides had dismissed the Annapolis gathering as an outsized photo opportunity, and Wednesday’s meeting drew little media attention or commentary.

Israel seized East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War and then annexed it. Palestinians say the construction plans for the area’s Har Homa neighborhood violate Israel’s commitment to freeze settlement activity under the peace initiative.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that the building plans would not help the efforts to revive peace talks.

Israeli officials maintain that the construction plans were approved years ago and that Israel retains the right to build anywhere inside the boundaries of Jerusalem.

Most of the world does not recognize the annexation and considers Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as illegal settlements.

At the same time, the rocket salvos from Gaza are a reminder of the limits of Abbas’ authority. Hamas fighters thrashed security forces allied with Abbas’ Fatah party to gain sole control of Gaza in June, and since then, the Palestinian Authority president in effect has ruled only in the West Bank.

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ellingwood@latimes.com