TEL-AVIV, July 21 (RIA Novosti) - Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the resumption of direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians is strategically important for Tel Aviv.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that a deal was reached to resume direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians and the first round of negotiations was likely to take place in Washington next week.
“I believe that the resumption of the diplomatic process at this time is in Israel’s interest, which is vitally important and strategic,” Netanyahu said. “It [the process] is important as a tool to end the conflict between us and Palestinians and important in the light of the strategic challenges we are facing, particularly from Iran and Syria.”
Kerry arrived in Jordan’s capital Amman on Tuesday for talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Arab leaders. On Friday, Kerry traveled to the West Bank city of Ramallah to meet with Abbas again. Before the visit to Ramallah, the US top diplomat held a surprise meeting with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
According to Kerry, if everything goes as expected, Erekat, along with Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who in charge of the negotiations, and Israeli prime minister's emissary Yitzhak Molcho, will join him in Washington “within the next week or so.”
The Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and want Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories it occupied after the 1967 war.
Israel has, however, refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to consider giving up a part of Jerusalem, which it says is the indivisible capital of the Jewish state.
