State spokesperson Crowley continued: “George has returned. He had a wide range of discussions not just with the Israelis and Palestinians, as he always does, but with others in the region whose support is critical to moving the parties forward into direct negotiations. Those meetings included the UAE, Qatar, and Egypt. We will continue our discussions with these key players and see if we can find the way to move them forward.

QUESTION: P.J., recently the – in fact, a couple days ago, the Israel press reviewed that Israel has what they call a secret plan to absolve itself of any responsibility for Gaza, and basically they want to call – they are discussing this with the European – six European ministers. And what they want is an international force to come and control the borders. And it’s (inaudible), interpreted as basically saddling Egypt with Gaza and (inaudible) any possibility for a viable state. Any comments on this topic? Any information on that and so on? It is a plan that is being –

MR. CROWLEY replied: We don’t normally comment on secret plans from the party”.

In the briefing, Crowley was also asked about remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a recent interview:

QUESTION: Palestinian President Abbas … seems to be saying that he would like the United States to specify what the boundaries of a Palestinian state would look like before he enters into direct talks. Are you aware of that? Is that something the United States would be prepared to do?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, we’ve had discussions in the recent days with the Palestinian authorities, including President Abbas. I’m not going to reveal the specifics of those conversations. Our message to both parties is let’s get to direct negotiations as quickly as possible, where, in fact, we can address the fundamental issues and the process, including borders. These are issues that we think can only be resolved within the context of direct negotiations. Now, there certainly is the opportunity in the proximity talks that we’re having and other contacts that we have to clarify and identify the foundation upon which the direct negotiations could pursue. So, is the opportunity to have dialogue on these issues leading up to direct negotiations, of course. But ultimately, in order to address the concerns that we know that both parties have – refugees, security, Jerusalem, borders – those are going to be resolved in the direct negotiations themselves.

QUESTION: Does the United States have a map per se that it is ready – that it might be ready to put forward?

MR. CROWLEY: We will play a constructive role, but ultimately this is something that the parties themselves have to resolve”.

The full transcript of their remarks is posted here.

According to Haaretz, Erekat also said in the interview that: “Our position is that the key to direct negotiations is in the hand of Mr. Netanyahu … The minute he stops settlement activities including natural growth in Jerusalem, the minute he agrees to go to permanent status talks, where we left them in December 2008, we’ll have direct talks … The Israelis have a choice, settlements or peace. They can’t have both”. These remarks are reported here.

The last time we heard about an Obama call to Abu Mazen was on the day after Obama’s inauguration — and his call to Abu Mazen then was his first to a foreign leader after taking office.

Apparently, U.S. Special Middle East envoy will be back in the region soon [either for a sixth round of indirect or "proximity" talks that started in May, or perhaps to transition into the direct mode which is, and always was, inevitable].

How do we know about this? Haaretz wrote that “Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the Palestinian news agency WAFA following the phone conversation that Abbas expressed his commitment to a serious peace process that would ‘end the occupation’ and result in an independent Palestinian state”. This report can be read in full ,strong>here].

This is posted here.

This report and analysis by Nathan Brown can be read in full here.

About a week ago, as the NY Times reported from Washington on 15 April, Obama said that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “a vital national security interest of the United States”.

As the NY Times wrote: “It was just a phrase at the end of President Obama’s news conference on Tuesday, but it was a stark reminder of a far-reaching shift in how the United States views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and how aggressively it might push for a peace agreement. When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests. This shift, described by administration officials who did not want to be quoted by name when discussing internal discussions, is driving the White House’s urgency to help broker a Middle East peace deal. It increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state … Mr. Obama’s words reverberated through diplomatic circles in large part because they echoed those of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the military commander overseeing America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent Congressional testimony, the general said that the lack of progress in the Middle East created a hostile environment for the United States … The glimmers of daylight between United States and Israeli interests began during President George W. Bush’s administration, when the United States became mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Three years ago, Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, declared during a speech in Jerusalem that a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians was a ’strategic interest’ of the United States … ‘In the past, the problem of who drinks out of whose well in Nablus has not been a strategic interest of the United States’, said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel and the vice president and the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. He said there was an interest now because of the tens of thousands of troops fighting Islamist insurgencies abroad at the same time that the United States was trying to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. ‘Will resolving the Palestinian issue solve everything? Mr. Indyk said. ‘No. But will it help us get there? Yes’. The administration’s immediate priority, officials said, is jump-starting indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians. There is still a vigorous debate inside the administration about what to do if such talks were to go nowhere, which experts said is the likeliest result, given the history of such negotiations. Some officials, like Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, advocate putting forward an American peace plan, while others, like the longtime Middle East peace negotiator Dennis B. Ross, who now works in the National Security Council, favor a more incremental approach … Several officials point out that Mr. Obama has now seized control of Middle East policy himself, particularly since the controversy several weeks ago when Israeli authorities announced new Jewish housing units in Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Obama, incensed by that snub, has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a list of demands, and relations between the United States and Israel have fallen into a chilly standoff”… This NY Times article can be read in full here.

Obama’s big discussion with Netanyahu in the White House was actually a month ago, on 23 March.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Senior U.S. officials said the Obama administration has discussed in recent weeks the possibility of the White House setting out its own benchmarks and timelines for the peace process if current efforts to resume negotiations fail. They said such a step wouldn’t be unlike the steps taken by former President Bill Clinton in late 2000, where he set parameters calling for a Palestinian state based on the pre-June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. Still, U.S. officials said such a move by the Obama administration wasn’t imminent. And they stressed that they hoped the Israelis and Palestinians would agree to voluntarily return to direct talks. U.S. officials said Mr. Netanyahu’s government has been communicating much of its position through the White House’s senior Middle East adviser Dennis Ross, at times bypassing the Obama administration’s special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell. That decision has been interpreted by some in the administration as an attempt to sideline Mr. Mitchell in favor of Mr. Ross, who has advocated U.S. cooperation with Mr. Netanyahu, rather than confrontation. Mr. Ross has publicly taken positions in line with Mr. Netanyahu’s government, particularly the centrality of stopping Iran’s nuclear program as a means to underpin Mideast peace efforts … Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed to the White House this weekend his rejection of a U.S. call for a total Israeli construction freeze in East Jerusalem, calling into question the path toward Middle East peace, according to officials briefed on the diplomacy … In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said stopping construction in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem ‘is totally, totally a nonstarter’.”  This article is published here.

With characteristic, and delicious, irony, Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz today that “The prime minister’s response Thursday on Channel 2 that ‘there will be no freeze [in construction] in Jerusalem’, is like Bill Clinton’s ‘I did not have sex with that woman’. Benjamin Netanyahu did not insist this time that he will continue construction in Ramat Shlomo, Gilo and Har Homa – something he is leaving for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to do … The two were aware that the moment they were swearing that ‘united Jerusalem’ would never be divided, Barack Obama’s envoys were packing their bags for a visit to the region. The Israelis knew that special envoy George Mitchell was not being sent to the eternal capital just to hear Netanyahu insist on developing the real estate business in East Jerusalem. Mitchell put up with a lot on his way to a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and did not come here to nail shut the coffin of the peace process. He does not want to bury Israel’s relations with the White House.  The signs were thick Thursday that behind the proclamations of a ‘unified Jerusalem’, a quiet accord was in the works with the Americans … The key thing is that the Palestinians don’t read in the paper that the interior minister approved new construction in the Holy City”. This Akiva Eldar report is here.

A few days earlier,  Akiva Eldar wrote this on Israel’s Independence Day celebrations held at the beginning of this week (according to the Jewish calendar, while the rest of the world marks the date as  May 15):  “This was one of our most independent years ever. Completely independently, we decided to welcome the vice president of the United States with an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem; the deputy foreign minister independently humiliated the Turkish ambassador; the foreign minister independently boycotted the president of Brazil; the Knesset independently sabotaged relations with the European Union via legislation that would limit its donations to human rights groups; the government independently decided to bait the Muslim world by declaring holy sites in the occupied territories as ‘heritage sites’ …  Sixty-two years after Israel declared independence, its right-wing government is entitled to decide that the time has come to annex Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Jordan Valley – just as the Labor government did 43 years ago, when it decided to annex a sizable territory to Jerusalem. This year, too, Israeli citizens are entitled to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the only capital in the world that hosts not a single embassy. Benjamin Netanyahu can even propose that U.S. President Barack Obama append his list of questions to the Wye Agreement, the road map and the Annapolis Declaration. After all, Israel is an independent country … The winning phrase of the 62nd year of Israel’s independence is undoubtedly the angry response Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon would make to reports that the Obama administration intends to present its own peace plan. The man who was Israel’s ambassador to Washington said that by doing so, the U.S. would become a ‘party to the conflict’.  In other words, today, the U.S. is not a ‘party to the conflict’. The implication is that in order to respect Israeli independence, the American administration is required to forever put up with the Israeli occupation and ignore the settlements. The U.S. is a ‘party to the conflict’ only when Israel requires an airlift of arms, sanctions against Iran or a veto of unpleasant resolutions at the United Nations.  Shortly after the previous independence day, it seemed that Netanyahu had struck the right balance on how the conflict should be resolved between the particularist worldview he shares with most members of his government and the positions of the world’s major powers. Moreover, it appeared that the support he expressed in his speech at Bar-Ilan University for a solution of two states for two peoples reflected recognition of the fact that Israel’s independence will not be complete until the Palestinians receive their own independent state.  Instead, the Netanyahu government has implemented the views of the majority of independent Israel’s Knesset, which supports the policy of settlements in the West Bank and deepening the Jewish hold on East Jerusalem. To fend off pressure from abroad, Netanyahu has once again transformed the Jewish Diaspora into a defensive army against the might of the nations of the world. The leader of ‘independent’ Israel has transformed Jewish activists into ‘parties to the conflict’ between his government and the American administration (we, of course, are allowed to meddle in American politics)” …  This Akiva Eldar analysis was published here.

Meanwhile, just to be perfectly helpful, Netanyahu has made a proposal that he knows perfectly well Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected for years. As Haaretz reported Friday, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is amenable to an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders. Netanyahu considers such an interim step a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was created because of the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to resume talks on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insists on delaying discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process, and refuses to agree to a freeze on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu and his aides have held intensive contacts in recent days with representatives of the U.S. administration in an effort to contain the crisis in the relations between the two countries … The formula of a Palestinian state within temporary borders was included in the second stage of the road map of 2003, but the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Abbas at their head, opposed it then and oppose it now, considering it a recipe for keeping Israeli occupation of the territories in place. Three Israeli politicians – Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and MK Shaul Mofaz of Kadima – tried to advance the idea of a Palestinian state within temporary borders during the past year, as a reasonable recipe for breaking out of the current political stalemate that was created since elections in Israel. Netanyahu is now leading toward their view, after losing hope of moving toward a permanent settlement with Abbas. If this initiative progresses, it is expected to result in objections from the parties on the right, who oppose any concession to the Palestinians. Establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, or even a partial framework with temporary borders, will require Israel to withdraw from more territory and perhaps even evacuate settlements. But if the Palestinians reject the idea – as is expected – Netanyahu will be able to claim that they are once more missing an opportunity for a settlement by being stubborn and rejectionist”… This Haaretz report can be read in full here.

But, when U.S. Vice President was on an official three-day visit to Israel and the region, there were serial announcements about an increase of housing units in areas of Jewish population concentration (ok, let’s call them “settlements”) in what was the West Bank before the Israeli occupation in the June 1967 war, but which Israel insists is its unilaterally-defined “Greater Jerusalem Municipality” which will be eternally united [except for areas that Israel will unilaterally decide to cut off by The Wall, because of their dense Palestinian population].

The U.S. Administration was not amused — and let this be known both privately and publicly.

Gershon Baskin writes, in an email he sent around today, that “The facts of what really transpired are not completely known to the public. There are rumors and only limited clear facts really known. The following is what I have been able to piece together – with a clear reservation that if this scenario is incorrect then the projections may also be incorrect; however, if it is correct the situation is in fact the most serious crisis in Israel-US relations, perhaps, ever. Prior to the decision of the Arab League to support the launching of the proximity talks, the PLO presented Mitchell with a three page document with questions and firms positions regarding the beginning of the negotiations. The Palestinian paper included: negotiations will be based on the green line, the negotiations should begin where the Olmert proposal to Abbas ended, the negotiations must include all of the permanent status issues and there must be a total settlement freeze, including Jerusalem, throughout the course of the negotiations. I was told by someone who is usually a reliable Palestinian source that Senator Mitchell gave Abbas a paper with the US responses include [sic - it should probably read including, or requiring] US assurances that the Israeli building in East Jerusalem would be frozen during the period of the negotiations. If this is true, I can only assume that Netanyahu agreed to it, although he probably also agreed that there would be no Israeli announcement of this policy. Again, if this is true, then advancing the planning process of the 1600 units in Ramat Shlomo and other plans that were advanced in the District and Local planning committees at the same time is a direct breach of trust with the US and is therefore, much more serious than a bureaucratic mishap or a simple decrease in trust between the parties prior to negotiations. The depth of the breach also determines to a certain extent the depth of the policy options”.

Gershon continues: “Certainly Netanyahu’s announcement in the Knesset in front of the Brazilian President that regardless of the mishap, Israel would continue to build in all parts of East Jerusalem is a clear sign of the decision of this government to go head-to-head with President Obama. Netanyahu’s announcement followed the Clinton-Netanyahu 43-minute phone call reported in depth by Clinton and by the State Department spokesperson to the world. Clinton include three demands to Israel: (1) the withdraw the plan for the 1600 units in Ramat Shlomo, (2) to provide serious gestures to the Palestinians such as a prisoner release and checkpoint removals; and (3) to announce that all permanent status issues would be on the table during the negotiations. Netanyahu’s statement that the building in Jerusalem would continue following the US demands is a direct frontal attack on the Obama administration and cannot be viewed in any other terms”.

Then, Gershon wrote: “As I read the Israeli political map, Netanyahu, in coordination with his allies in Congress, AIPAC, and other US Jewish organizations have made a decision that President Obama will be, as far as they are concerned, a one term President. In this respect, they seek to weaken the President, regardless of the repercussions in the international community. Mid-term Congressional elections are only eight months away and the strategic map of key Congressional races has been mapped out with the goal of winning those races in Congress with the most pro-Obama members that are vulnerable. The challenge to the President by the Israeli government on the issue of building in East Jerusalem is one that will largely determine if the President is perceived in Israel , the region and the world as weak or strong. If the US administration gives in to the Government of Israel after making this such a pinnacle issue, the prestige, power and reputation of the President will be severely damaged. Ironically, Israel needs a strong US President to take on the international community vis-à-vis Iran and the Israeli challenge could in fact weaken the President and the United States . The Government of Israel does not perceive that it is the party that has climbed high up the ladder. In fact, I have been asked in the past 2 days, by the Israeli national Security Advisor and the Director of the Policy Planning Research department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel: ‘what will bring the Palestinians down from the top of the tree?’ ” …

Gershon asks: “Why did Netanyahu make the challenge? One, because this is his ideological position. Two, because of the coalition pressure, especially from Lieberman and Shas who have turned the issue of Israel standing up against the world in to the new Israeli worldview. Lieberman says it everyday, we will no longer give into to any international pressure, we will make the world respect Israel ! And with a not to distant leadership crisis in Shas, Eli Yishai is building his leadership around the issue of Jerusalem as the Jewish Protector of Jerusalem. Three, there is the scenario spelled out above of a determined course to weaken the President and to ensure that he will not have a second term”.

Then, he says: “With the current Israeli coalition, there is no chance at all of moving forward on the peace process with the Palestinians. It is not at all sure that it is possible to move forward as long as Netanyahu is at the head of the government. There is hope, however, that the same dynamic that has influenced other Israeli leaders to radically change their positions could also happen to Netanyahu – as Rabin, Sharon and Olmert all stated: what you see from here is different than what you see from there”.

As Gershon sees it, for the U.S.:

1. Backing down is not an option. If the US were to give into Israeli pressure, the US administration would be perceived as weak, inconsistent with their own policies, and ineffectual. The prestige of the Office of the President would be compromised and Obama as an individual would be seen as a push-over which would have deep repercussions for the US foreign policy throughout the world and especially in the Middle East . US backing down would also strengthen the myth of the power of the Jewish Lobby in the United States and would probably lead to a direct rise in anti-Semitism throughout the world. So it is essential for the President that at least the three demands issued by Secretary Clinton are met by Israel . It is likely that Secretary Clinton’s position will be strengthen from the Quartet principles meeting in Moscow today.

There is no option for the US to do nothing. It would be advised that whatever the US does, it should be done in coordination and in full collaboration with the full Quartet”.

UPDATE: Obama has invited Netanyahu to meet him in Washington next Tuesday…

UPDATE TWO: The American Task Force on Palestine’s Hussein Ibish (who happens to be Lebanese) has posted some advice to the Palestinians on his blog (Ibishblog.com):
“The Obama Administration and the Netanyahu Cabinet, especially its right wing including Interior Minister Yishai of Shas who made the decision and the announcement, have been on a collision course for many months. Their visions of long-term peace and short-term negotiation strategy are totally incompatible, and as I’ve noted in the past, we now find ourselves in a most unusual situation in which the American position is closer to the Palestinian perspective on both of these registers than to the Israeli view. The added complication is that because of domestic political considerations, the United States is still politically much closer and provides much more support to the side in the Middle East conflict it now disagrees with more. In other words, yet again, there is a fairly radical gap between policy and politics that is rendering the quest for a reasonable peace agreement, and even reasonable terms for the resumption of negotiations, dysfunctional. For the Palestinians in this situation, obviously less is more. The controversy has had a life of its own, and the less Palestinians did and do to stoke the flames, at least in any obvious way, the more traction it will have for them. When other people (in this case the Israeli government) are doing your heavy lifting for you, sit back and let it happen. For the most part, Palestinians have done and said what they should have: very little. For those who are wondering why the Ibishblog has been silent on this controversy until now, consider the usefulness sometimes of saying little to nothing, and the silliness of a knee-jerk and adolescent impulse to always want to comment on everything right away, when sometimes judicious silence can be the most effective commentary of all. Netanyahu has managed to dig himself a remarkably deep hole, and it is imperative that Palestinians do not, as they have so many times in the past, pull him out of it through their own miscalculations. This can be done by incautious words as well as ill-considered deeds. What has happened that is so useful for the Palestinians is that American and international perceptions, especially in Washington, have now been reoriented in an extremely healthy manner” …

Ibish concluded: “Palestinians need to take a very sober and cautious approach to dealing with the ongoing US-Israel confrontation over settlements. If they overplay their hand, they will fail to reap any political or diplomatic benefits from what is an extraordinary opportunity. Not only do they have to not overreact, and to cast themselves as helpful and constructive in contrast to the defiance and obduracy of the Israeli cabinet, they have to understand what is genuinely useful to them and what is not. Palestinians DO benefit from a measure of tension between Israeli and American positions that allows the United States to be more evenhanded and to use its leverage and special relationship with Israel to push Israeli policies in the right direction. However, Palestinians WILL NOT benefit from a boiling over of US-Israeli tensions that produces a level of mistrust that, while not affecting the broader strategic special relationship, prevents any serious US influence on Israeli policies, and, worse, that might induce an administration to actually walk away from the issue and abandon peace efforts. There is no point in hoping for an end to the US-Israel special relationship, since there is no way of achieving this in the foreseeable future, and no need to achieve it in order to realize an end to the occupation. Palestinians can and should look for opportunities to leverage the special relationship and use it to pursue a goal that is in not only the Palestinian and American national interests, but in Israel’s as well, even if the present Netanyahu government does not fully understand this. That’s an achievable aim, and the present US-Israel confrontation offers a rare and extraordinary opportunity to push the ball towards that goal line”. This post can be read in full here.

See our sidebars, here, on the Road Map and on Israel’s reservations.

Eldar continues: “Netanyahu argues that Sharon reached an oral agreement with George W. Bush that the construction freeze would not apply to the ’settlement blocs’ and that the United States would take into account natural-growth requirements. The prime minister therefore expects the Palestinians to honor not only formal agreements to which they were a party, but also informal understandings reached behind their backs between Israel and America. Yet when the Palestinians demand an acknowledgment of understandings they reached with the Olmert government on a number of final-status principles, Netanyahu says this is a ‘precondition that predetermines the outcome of negotiations’. The prime minister also contemptuously rejects the Palestinian demand that the talks be resumed where they were halted in December 2008. He is not prepared to even listen to the parameters for a final-status agreement proposed by Bill Clinton in December 2000. Netanyahu insists he has the right to start negotiations from square one, ignoring every agreement already reached with the Palestinians. He has even forgotten the Wye River Memorandum of 1998, under which he undertook, in Clinton’s presence, to transfer 13 percent of Area C to the Palestinians. Netanyahu sticks only to those clauses in the interim agreement (Oslo 2) that removed responsibility for the Palestinians’ welfare from Israel’s hands and left Israel in control of Area C (60 percent of the West Bank). And of course, Netanyahu is totally committed to those clauses that require the Palestinians to combat terrorist infrastructure and incitement and refrain from asking the United Nations to condemn the injustices of the occupation. Netanyahu is setting conditions for negotiations that no country would accept. His opposition to a settlement freeze and his refusal to resume talks where they left off expose his Bar-Ilan declarations as a cunning diversionary tactic”. This Akiva Eldar article can be read in full here.

“QUESTION: There’s been several Arab media or Middle Eastern media reports that George Mitchell offered his resignation, and just seeing if you might be able to confirm – it was – which was refused.

MR. CROWLEY: I have no idea. (Laughter.) I mean, look. He is – if you know George Mitchell, he’s committed to this and he is an extraordinarily patient man. When you look – when he talks about his experiences in Northern Ireland over several years, that – he understands that it will just take hard work and determination that finally will create that tipping point where the parties will commit, seriously address the issues, and move towards a settlement. So I don’t – I see nothing but determination in George Mitchell’s eyes“…