Its hard to credit this report because it ignores Obama’s embrace of the Saudi Plan in favour of Israel’s embrace of Res 242. It suggests that if Abbas accepts it it will because he believes that Res 242 requires full withdrawal. Israel is happy to negotiate on this basis. But this report is silent on whether it means the end of the Roadmap which includes the Saudi Plan and includes the settlement freeze. Res 242 is silent on settlement construction. HAARETZ Meanwhile Wednesday, Israeli officials said that Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is close to a deal with Israel on terms for resuming peace talks with the Palestinians. “There appears to be a meeting of the minds and hopefully the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue will be able to re-start in the near future,” an Israeli official said, summing up talks held by negotiators for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington. Under the prospective deal, on which Palestinians have not yet commented, the negotiations could be held on the basis of two decades-old United Nations Security Council resolutions, 242 and 338, another official said. Such a formula could be acceptable to Israel since it interprets

those resolutions as falling short of a demand to withdraw from all of the West Bank, territory it captured during the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinians, who seek a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, hold that the resolutions, which call for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”, obliges Israel to return to pre-1967 lines. Palestinian negotiators were in Washington on Tuesday for talks with U.S. officials on how to relaunch negotiations. Washington apparently hopes to persuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to peace talks based on the resolutions, enabling each side to cleave to its own interpretation and avoid conceding diplomatic ground on borders before negotiations resume. However, Abbas has given no public sign he has dropped a main Palestinian condition for a resumption of negotiations – an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank in accordance with a 2003 U.S.-backed peace “road map”. A progress report U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to deliver within days to Obama on Mitchell’s mediation efforts could clarify the situation.

Originally posted here:
Israeli officials: Deal imminent with U.S. on Mideast talks