Israeli, Palestinian leaders agree to meet in Washington

The Obama administration said Friday that it has invited the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to Washington early next month to resume long-stalled direct peace talks, recognizing “there will be difficulties ahead” in the latest effort to achieve a final settlement of the conflict.

In announcing the invitation, which Israel and the Palestinian Authority both accepted, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged that it will be a daunting challenge to reach agreement on the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and other decades-old disagreements between the two sides, particularly in the proposed 12-month timetable.

“There have been difficulties in the past. There will be difficulties ahead,” Clinton said.

The secretary of State said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would come to Washington for a Sept. 1 dinner at the White House with President Obama, followed by a face-to-face meeting of the two leaders that Clinton will convene the following day at the State Department.

After these largely ceremonial talks, the negotiations probably would continue in the region, with the U.S. acting as mediator and, if necessary, introducing proposals aimed at bridging differences between the two sides, officials said.

The U.S. will be an active participant, Clinton said, but she emphasized that in the end “these decisions will be made by the parties themselves.” The European Union, Russia and the United Nations joined the U.S. in pushing for the peace talks.

Israeli leaders welcomed the invitation.

“Reaching an agreement is a difficult challenge but is possible,” Netanyahu said in a statement Friday night. “We are coming to the talks with a genuine desire to reach a peace agreement between the two peoples that will protect Israel’s national security interests, foremost of which is security.”

Netanyahu has long said he is open to talks. Palestinians officials have repeatedly voiced their concerns about the terms and conditions of such negotiations.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said the Abbas government had accepted after an emergency meeting. But Abed-Rabbo said any failure by Israel to fully halt settlement building on Israeli-occupied land where the Palestinians aim to found a state would endanger the talks.

The peace talks are a breakthrough for Obama, who had made a return to negotiations a top priority of his foreign policy agenda. Administration officials believe that holding the talks could promote a warming of relations between the United States and its allies in the region, and thus help build support for other American goals, such as the war in Afghanistan and the effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Still, administration officials know that the effort to reach a final settlement is full of complications, with a conservative government in power in Israel and its Palestinian negotiating partner able to speak for only a portion of the Palestinian population.

The militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, population 1.5 million, and refuses to recognize Israel, quickly denounced the talks and said it would not agree to any deal that is reached.

One White House official on Friday described peace talks as a “tradition” in which every American president must participate.

“This is something that there has been a long-standing U.S. commitment to engage with the Israelis and Palestinians on,” said John Brennan, assistant to the president for counter-terrorism and homeland security. “Previous administrations have dedicated much effort and energy to this, and the Obama administration is carrying this tradition on.”

The decision to seek a final settlement, rather than pursuing a less ambitious goal as a starting point, is a gamble by the Obama administration that has been tried unsuccessfully by previous administrations, notably by then- President Clinton in the waning months of his administration.

In addition to settling competing claims for Jerusalem and borders of a Palestinian state, major issues to be negotiated are Israeli security with the creation of a separate state on the West Bank, and the claims of Palestinian refugees.

A resumption of direct talks has been an important but elusive goal for Obama since he took office and declared that a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to bringing stability in the Middle East. The effort faltered in Obama’s first year in office as Netanyahu initially refused to agree to a freeze on building new housing in Jerusalem and the West Bank, while Abbas called for the lifting of the Israeli embargo preventing many types of goods from entering the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. had spent months on shuttle diplomacy — special envoy George J. Mitchell has been meeting extensively with Israeli and Palestinian officials since May — with little discernible result.

Negotiators signaled a breakthrough this week, when Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, announced in a letter to other EU officials that Abbas was on the brink of committing to talks.

The major issues are not easily solved.

Palestinians wanted the invitation to include a demand that Israel continue its moratorium, set to expire Sept. 26, on most new housing construction in the West Bank and an assurance that talks will use pre-1967 borders as a starting point. Israel refused to accept what it calls “preconditions,” saying such matters should be settled at the negotiating table.

Palestinians warn that another round of failed peace talks could bring the end of the Palestinian Authority, which has been negotiating unsuccessfully with Israel for statehood for nearly two decades.

“Direct talks would lead to a massive failure of the Palestinian national project,” wrote jailed Hamas leader Abdul Khaleq Natsheh in a letter released this week, according to the Palestinian news agency Maan.

Although pessimism may shadow the resumption of Mideast peace talks, the wild card is the U.S. role.

The prospect that Obama will actively participate has stirred hope among Palestinians, who think the president may have more sympathy for their cause, and anxiety among the Israelis, who worry that the administration will press them for concessions that threaten their security.

david.cloud@latimes.com

cparsons@latimes.com

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Cloud and Parsons reported from Washington and Sanders from Jerusalem.

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington and Peter Nicholas in Vineyard Haven, Mass., contributed to this report. Times special correspondents Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City and Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, also contributed.