Yesterday’s announcement that Israel and the Palestinians will restart face-to-face talks marks a major breakthrough after months of US shuttle diplomacy, but the hurdles remain as formidable as ever.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas are set to meet on September 2 in Washington for talks that will formally relaunch the direct negotiations.
The invitation extended yesterday by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington was promptly welcomed by the Israeli government.
The US scored a major victory just in getting the two sides to sit at the same table after they had shunned each other for almost two years.
But a similar relaunch of negotiations amid much fanfare at Annapolis in Maryland in November 2007 had produced no visible results by the time the talks collapsed when Israel launched its devastating military 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip just over a year later.
The main issues, such as the borders of a future Palestinian state, remain unresolved.
Israel is adamant that it will not grant the “right to return” to their former homes to the 4.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
And both sides remain firmly entrenched in their positions over Jerusalem. Israel considers the whole city to be its “eternal and indivisible” capital, while the Palestinians insist the capital of their promised state will be east Jerusalem – which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by the international community.
In a statement that coincided with Mrs Clinton’s remarks, the Middle East diplomatic Quartet – made up of the EU, Russia, the UN and the US – referred to its previous calls for a freeze of all Israeli settlement activity in the Palestinian territories.
But it made no specific reference to the expiration at the end of September of a partial, 10-month moratorium on construction of new settler homes in the occupied West Bank.
Calls for the moratorium to be extended have caused controversy in Israel.
The settlement issue has been one of the thorniest in peace efforts.
US attempts to get the negotiations back on track suffered a major setback in March when authorities announced the construction of 1,600 new settler homes in east Jerusalem.
That announcement came just as US Vice President Joe Biden was in the region to broker indirect talks as a prelude to face-to-face negotiations.
The “proximity” talks eventually started on May 9, with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell shuttling between Washington, Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Mr Mitchell has remained tight-lipped about the contents of the talks, whose only visible result has been the agreement to move on to direct negotiations.
Further underlining the fragility of the peace process, the Islamist Hamas movement, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since ousting forces loyal to Abbas in 2007, on Friday rejected the call for the resumption of negotiations.
“This invitation is a new attempt to fool the Palestinian people after the Annapolis experience, during which we were promised a Palestinian state within a year, but many years have passed and we are still at square one,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.