By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Jonathan Ferziger Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has returned to the Middle East in a bid to prod Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table five weeks after President Barack Obama failed to kick-start peace talks. Clinton flew from Pakistan late yesterday to Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf, where she plans to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas . Late today, she will head to Israel for consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who has resisted U.S. pressure to halt settlement construction in the West Bank as a gesture toward peacemaking with the Palestinians. The Mideast swing comes a week after Clinton reported to Obama that it is premature to resume formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The Palestinians need to do more to stop incitement and prevent terror, and Israel needs to do more to improve the lives of the Palestinians, an administration official said Clinton told Obama. Obama had ordered a review of the peace effort after holding a three-way meeting with Abbas and Netanyahu Sept. 22 in New York. “We are going to continue down this road and do everything we can to clear away whatever concerns that the parties have, to actually get them into negotiations where they then can thrash out all of these difficult issues,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN before she left Pakistan. In Jerusalem, Netanyahu met yesterday with U.S. envoy George Mitchell to prepare for the Clinton meeting and said he hoped the secretary of state would enable Israelis and Palestinians to restart peace talks “as soon as possible.” Extended Diplomacy Still, Clinton may be anticipating extended diplomacy before the U.S. can show results. Abbas has said he won’t return to the negotiating table until Netanyahu backs a settlement freeze. “From the very beginning, the Obama administration set a goal of demonstrating progress in a Palestinian-Israeli peace track,” Gerald Steinberg , a Bar-Ilan University political scientist, said in a telephone interview. “If there can’t be progress, there can at least be lots of effort, which means more visits and more photo opportunities.” Palestinians have been losing faith in Obama’s peacemaking ability and in U.S. policies in the Mideast, according to a survey released Oct. 18 by the Jerusalem Media & Communications Center. Slightly less than 24 percent of those questioned said Obama could boost chances of peace, down from 35.4 percent who in June said they were optimistic about U.S. participation in the Mideast effort, according to the poll. ‘Some Kind of Gesture’ “I don’t think that Abbas will go back to the table without at least satisfying the issue of settlement expansion,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in the Gaza Strip. “There has to be some kind of gesture from Netanyahu, even if it’s just temporary.” Israelis and Palestinians are still fighting over the same issues since peace talks began through the 1993 Oslo accords at a White House ceremony presided over by former President Bill Clinton , Hillary Clinton’s husband. The agenda includes the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state. “I watched in the ‘90s as my husband just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and good things happened,” Hillary Clinton said in the CNN interview. “There wasn’t a final agreement but fewer people died, there were more opportunities for economic development, for trade, for exchanges. It had positive effects, even though it didn’t cross the finish line.” Iran Deal Clinton’s stopover in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi comes after Iran demanded changes to a United Nations-brokered deal that would send Iranian enriched uranium to Russia for processing into nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor. The Iranian reaction cast doubts over wider talks to allay suspicions Iran is seeking the means to build a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu praised the offer made to Iran, according to an e-mailed statement from his office. The proposal “is a positive first step,” Netanyahu told Mitchell yesterday in Jerusalem. The United Arab Emirates, an oil-producing U.S. ally that hosts American military bases, is a trading partner for Iran, which ships three-quarters of its refined fuel imports through Emirati ports. The U.S. Congress is considering legislation aimed at cutting off gasoline deliveries to Iran, which relies on imports to meet a third of its refined fuel needs. Clinton plans to meet with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during her visit. The crown prince, who is also deputy supreme commander of the U.A.E. armed forces, conferred with Obama at the White House in September. ‘No Coincidence’ “Clinton’s trip is no coincidence,” said Christopher Davidson , a Middle Eastern studies professor at Durham University in the U.K. “The U.A.E. has now become a major element in U.S. foreign policy because of Iran.” Dubai, the second-largest of the seven emirates in the U.A.E. after Abu Dhabi, also is a destination for Iranian investment and maintains trade and financial links. “Dubai is Iran’s main window to the global economy, and the U.S. is likely to press the U.A.E. to control Dubai’s relations with Iran,” said Davidson, author of “Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success,” published last year. To contact the reporters on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Abu Dhabi at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net ; Jonathan Ferziger in Jerusalem at jferziger@bloomberg.net
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Clinton Seeks to Prod Israelis, Palestinians to Table During Mideast Trip
