Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday that a peace deal with Palestinians was more than a year away, despite recent comments to the contrary floated by Palestinian National Authority and American officials.
“The peace process is unlikely to end within the next year, as disagreements between the two sides are too deep,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with Israel Radio.
Lieberman said that Israel will renew construction in West Bank settlements, after a self-imposed 10-month building freeze concludes on September 26. It was not clear what the extent of that construction would be.
But Palestinians have threatened to walk out on next week’s talks in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, if the bulldozers are fired up.
This is the first time Israeli and Palestinians will be sitting across the table in direct talk in almost two years.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has invited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to attend the talks. Clinton said the U.S. had no illusions over the extent of the differences between the Israelis and Palestinians.
“There have been difficulties in the past, there will be difficulties ahead,” Clinton said in a statement, but added, “I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region.”
Palestinian officials, as well, expressed doubts over the success of the meeting, and warned of points of contention.
“It’s impossible to conduct negotiations alongside settlement construction,” Abbas wrote in a letter sent to U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Catherine Ashton, high representative of the European Union on foreign policy.
Netanyahu said on Friday in a statement from his office, that ” 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.”
“It can be done in less than a year,” chief PNA negotiator Saeb Erekat said last week of achieving a possible deal, but added, ” the most important thing now is to see to it that the Israeli government refrains from settlement activities, incursions, fait accomplis policies,” according to Erekat.