PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas is due to hold talks in Cairo today with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as the parties in the region weigh their responses to the US announcement that efforts to revive the direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have failed.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said a next step would be to ask the United States to recognise a Palestinian state.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians were assessing their options before responding to the American announcement.
Mr Rabbo indicated that the Palestinians would now turn to the international community because they have lost faith in Washington’s ability to broker a fair solution.
“It’s unclear how the United States plans to succeed where it has so far failed, and it has failed mainly because of the Israeli policy,” he said.
On Tuesday night US officials confirmed that efforts to clinch a deal with Israel involving a new three-month settlement building freeze in return for a package of US concessions, had failed.
Officials in Jerusalem rejected Palestinian claims of Israeli intransigence.
According to these officials Washington became convinced that even if Israel agreed to another 90-day construction moratorium, the two sides would not be able to clinch an agreement on borders within such a short period.
Israeli and Palestinian representatives will meet separately in Washington in the coming days with US officials to discuss a way out of the impasse.
US secretary of state Hilary Clinton may shed some light on the American strategy when she addresses a gathering of the Saban Center for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington tomorrow.
One thing is clear: the Middle East policy of the administration of President Barack Obama lies in tatters.
It took the new administration, which declared Middle East peace efforts a top priority, almost a year before they succeeded in actually getting Israeli and Palestinian negotiators around the same table.
However, only three rounds of direct talks were held in September before the Palestinians broke off the negotiations in response to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to extend the 10-month settlement freeze.
Some analysts believe that the only realistic chance of breaking the diplomatic deadlock will be a secret negotiating track, similar to the talks in Oslo that led to the historic peace agreement in 1993.
Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned yesterday that time was running out for a two-state solution.
He said that in the light of American failure to renew the direct talks, it was time for the international community to step in and set an “end game” in the negotiations.
“The end game is that the international community, the Quartet – the Americans, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations – would agree on parameters for the settlement ,” he said.