Relaunch of Mideast talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas are about to relaunch direct peace talks tomorrow, but their cheerless faces at press meetings speak of anything but boundless optimism. Will the United States engineered-meeting produce anything even remotely resembling a breakthrough that the 17 years of largely fruitless talks desperately needs?

The public posturing of Netanyahu and Abbas spouting a willingness to compromise should evoke at least some degree of hope but it is not easy to set aside decades of mistrust and suspicion with intermittent bloodletting. However, Washington at least is optimistic that a Palestinian statehood accord can be achieved within a year with the start of Thursday's talks, which will be the first direct negotiations after a 20-month break between the two sides since the Palestinians broke off talks in December 2008, in the wake of a devastating Israel offensive against the Gaza Strip.

Listening to Netanyahu, a true blue hawk who only recognised the internationally-backed principle of a two-state solution last year, propound that the basic question was whether the Palestinian side will be as willing as the Israeli side to advance towards a peace that will resolve this conflict for generations to come, can be quite misleading. His rhetoric is exposed when this is matched with the reassurance he had given his right-wing Likud bloc in Israel's ruling coalition on Monday that he would never bow to territorial concessions in any peace talks with the Palestinians. "Don't worry," he had told Likud members. "Nobody needs to teach me what it is to love Eretz Israel, opting for a biblical term for the Land of Israel."

On the other hand, Abbas pleads with Israel not to miss this historic opportunity for peace even if there was only a one per cent chance of achieving it. It won't be long for the first test to take shape. The 10-month moratorium on Israeli settlement construction is set to expire on September 26. Abbas has left no doubt at all that the issue of settlement construction is so fundamental to the peace talks, that if it resumes, he will walk out of the talks. Period.

And Netanyahu has vowed that he has had enough of the moratorium and that he's not going to extend it under any cirumstances. After all, don't his right-wing coalition include settler and religious parties who would rather quit the government than to agree to territorial compromise? As the icing on his rhetoric, Netanyahu added that he hoped to find a brave partner in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has also arrived in Washington.

The Palestinians want the talks to be based on a statement issued by the Middle East Quartet and international law while US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has said the sides will determine the terms of reference when they meet while in a high-profile move US President Barack Obama is all set to host Netanyahu, Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at a dinner today. Many analysts view the US goal as being unrealistic, citing Israeli and Palestinian internal political divisions and the complexities of issues which include not only the settlements but also the fate of Jerusalem, that have defied solution until today. The world would be amiss to raise hopes high just yet.