Palestinian State

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday to agree to peace talks that would include three issues that have bedeviled Middle East negotiations since 1979. Late last evening, Olmert had not agreed to allow negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to include discussions about the status of Jerusalem, the borders of an eventual Palestinian state or the question of whether Palestinian refugees who fled, or were forced to leave, their homes would have a right to return to Israel.

JERUSALEM -- After three days of intensive diplomacy in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues and "a political horizon." The agreement steps up the pace of face-to-face discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but falls well short of starting substantive negotiations on the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

WASHINGTON -- Tomorrow's Mideast peace conference, behind the walls that guard the U.S. Naval Academy campus, is surrounded by misconceptions. For starters, it's not a negotiation. No one will be locking Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas into a room, there to stay until they've solved some of the Middle East's thorniest problems. Much of the arm-twisting associated with the conference will already have occurred by the time the leaders arrive in Annapolis -- it's what President Bush and the State Department have been doing for weeks, just to get them to show up. Nor is it clear that the one-day meeting will produce anything very substantial.

The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed yesterday at a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis to begin "vigorous, ongoing and continuous" negotiations to try to reach a comprehensive peace settlement by the end of next year. President Bush read a joint agreement by the two sides at the start of a daylong gathering at the U.S. Naval Academy that illustrated both the promise and pitfalls that lie ahead. Middle East analysts said the agreement fell short of a breakthrough, and Bush emphasized that the pact was only a beginning to further negotiations.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a diplomatic push in the Middle East, met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, but the idea of a two-state solution brought up differences between the officials. At a news conference at the Fatah Party headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Rice and Abbas smiled, shook hands and emphasized their mutual determination to move forward in establishing a Palestinian state. But while Abbas mentioned the importance of moving toward a two-state solution, as laid out in the U.S.-backed "road map," he rejected the plan's phased approach of first establishing a provisional Palestinian state.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leaders decided yesterday against declaring statehood Tuesday, retreating from a pledge that the Israelis saw as a threat and defusing a potentially volatile situation.At the urging of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, the Palestinian Central Council ended a three-day meeting in Gaza City by postponing the idea of pronouncing the West Bank and Gaza Strip a Palestinian state.Under the terms of the Oslo peace accord, Tuesday was the target date for completing final peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the negotiations have barely begun.

ALTHOUGH the United States was not part of the Oslo negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993, President Clinton dominates the commemoration.This two-day memorial to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli peacemaker assassinated by an Israeli extremist four years ago, is theater.But President Clinton's presence is serious business. His own place in history rests on the success of the ambitious timetable for peace that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak set for themselves.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton may make of herself a gift to the state of New York, which must replace Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is retiring. So she may wish to prepare answers to the sort of questions she can expect, such as:In upstate New York (yes, Mrs. Clinton, there is such a place; it is somewhat north of the Carlyle Hotel), the industrial corridor from Schenectady-Troy to Buffalo is hurting. The corridor includes Seneca Falls, birthplace of women's suffrage, to which you have made a pilgrimage.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat provided unsettling evidence this week that if a Palestinian state comes into being, it could fall far short of the democracy that his people say they want.During the weekend, his security forces arrested 11 critics who had signed a harsh condemnation of the Palestinian National Authority's alleged broken promises and who accused Arafat of fostering corruption.The Palestinian government's past attempts to silence opponents have drawn strong criticism from human rights organizations.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Of many standing ovations at the Shawwa Cultural Center yesterday, one of the warmest went to the other Clinton in the house, the U.S. president's wife, Hillary.Welcomed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a "great and generous guest," Hillary Rodham Clinton beamed to the audience, her daughter, Chelsea, at her side. Mrs. Clinton and Arafat's wife, Suha, seemed genuinely friendly, walking arm in arm and whispering to each other as though sharing confidences.Mrs.

Will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement that he accepts the idea of a Palestinian state help move the Middle East toward peace? Yes 25% No 63% Not sure 12% (295 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Is the Baltimore Police Department doing a good job of responding to increased reports of criminal activity in and around the Inner Harbor? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tends to be painfully incremental. But marginal progress is better than none at all, which is why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement Sunday that he is willing to accept a Palestinian state is a welcome development - even if it doesn't go nearly far enough. With Mr. Netanyahu's speech, a milestone has been reached. From this day forward, there can no longer be any serious debate about whether a Palestinian state will (or should)

Israeli voters' preference for hard-liners has left foreign minister and moderate Tzipi Livni in the unenviable position of having won but lost at the same time. With most votes counted, Ms. Livni, the leader of the center-right Kadima party, posted a one-vote win over the rival Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, in parliamentary elections Tuesday. And yet a strong finish by a third party of ultra-nationalists has seriously undermined her chances at forming a government. This embrace of the political right will complicate the United States' efforts to restart meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians.

That's the question University of Maryland scholar and Brookings Institution fellow Shibley Telhami set out to answer through an analysis of Arab public opinion surveys he conducted in six countries with Zogby International. The countries were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. How important is the issue of Palestine in your priorities? Eighty-six percent of non-Palestinians rated it the most important or within their top three priorities, compared with 73 percent in 2006.

The political commentators, top Democrats and their leading presidential contender couldn't say enough about President Bush's reference to Nazi appeasers during his speech last week to Israel's parliament. It was a perceived slap at Sen. Barack Obama's interest in talking to Iran and Syria - the evildoers the administration loves to hate - but it struck a chord on Israel's 60th anniversary because many of its citizens view Iran as their potential annihilator. What got less attention was Mr. Bush's single reference to the Palestinians in his speech, and it resonated in a way the president's speechwriters probably never intended.

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pressing for progress in peace talks ahead of a visit next week by President Bush, said yesterday that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of the year is an "achievable goal." Rice's upbeat remarks contrasted with more pessimistic assessments voiced by leaders on both sides, and her talks in Israel were overshadowed by a new corruption investigation against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Talks were revived in November at a conference hosted by Bush in Annapolis with the goal of reaching an agreement by year's end. But since then, there have been no visible signs of progress.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that former President Jimmy Carter's recent talks with the Palestinian group Hamas had not been helpful, and she disputed Carter's claim that no one in the government had tried to dissuade him from his mission. "We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contacts with Hamas," Rice told reporters in Kuwait, adding that the Bush administration had "wanted to make sure there would be no confusion and there would be no sense that Hamas was somehow a party to peace negotiations."

Soon after Jimmy Carter announced that the militant group Hamas was prepared to accept Israel's "right to live as a neighbor in peace" beside a Palestinian state, Hamas' political leader begged to differ. Hamas would not recognize Israel's right to exist, Khaled Mashaal said from Damascus; it would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. That clarification was a revealing addendum to Mr. Carter's trip to the Middle East, which ended Monday. This is not something that got lost in translation.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began addressing the most difficult issues of their decades-old conflict yesterday, keeping a promise to President Bush but putting Israel's coalition government under strain. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia emerged from a two-hour session at a Jerusalem hotel with little to say about what they had discussed. Israeli officials said the two lead negotiators planned to meet at least once a week.

Jerusalem is draping itself in the flags of the city, Israel and the United States in honor of President Bush's visit this week, perfect for the essential photo op. And that's all this trip sounds like it's shaping up to be since neither the president nor his advisers have identified any policy or message that Mr. Bush will relay to advance the commitments made at the Annapolis peace summit. And that's just unacceptable. The Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-Ramallah leg of Mr. Bush's Middle East journey can't be simply a stopover before the president heads to Arab capitals to discuss economic progress, regional security and his concerns over Iran.