US Middle East envoy George Mitchell met Israel's prime minister for a second time in two days on Wednesday in a bid to wring out a compromise on settlements in order to restart peace talks.
Mitchell huddled with Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem a day after shuttling between the premier and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, urging both sides to show "responsibility for peace" and budge the stalled peace process.
Mitchell is trying to get Israel to agree to some kind of a moratorium on settlement construction that would be acceptable to the Palestinians and enable negotiations to resume after they were suspended in late December amid the Gaza war.
"We've been asking all of the parties to take the responsibility for peace through concrete action in order to create an encouraging context for the prompt resumption and early conclusion of negotiations," the former US senator said after talks with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"We hope to bring this phase of our efforts to a positive conclusion in the coming weeks," he said.
Mitchell has been seeking a compromise that would pave the way for a three-way meeting between Netanyahu, Abbas and US President Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly later this month.
But he has faced an uphill task.
Hawkish Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out a complete freeze to Israel's settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem -- a move the Palestinians are insisting on in order to resume peace talks.
On Monday, Netanyahu repeated that he had no intention of implementing a complete freeze, saying any halt would be temporary, would not extend to east Jerusalem, and would exclude some 2,500 units already under construction.
Shortly after arriving for his latest regional trip, Mitchell said Washington shared a "sense of urgency" for peace talks to resume before the end of September.
Standing in the way are Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land, home to half a million Israelis.
The settlements are viewed as illegal by the international community, and one of the major obstacles in reaching any peace deal.
Obama's administration has been working towards a comprehensive peace package that would see Israel strike deals with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon, and Arab states normalise relations with the Jewish state after more than 60 years of conflict.
Israelis and Palestinians resumed peace negotiations in November 2007 after a nearly seven-year hiatus. But the talks made little visible progress and were suspended in late December after Israel launched its war in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Source: AFP Global Edition
