CASABLANCA, MOROCCO // John Kerry said on Friday that it was time for a “reality check” in foundering Middle East peace talks and warned that the US would evaluate whether to continue to take part.
The increasingly frustrated US secretary of state, who has spent the better part of his 14-month tenure trying to cajole the parties into talks, stopped short of declaring the peace process dead.
Mr Kerry, however, made clear his patience with Israeli and Palestinian officials was near exhausted.
“It is regrettable that in the last few days both sides have taken steps that are not helpful and that’s evident to everybody,” he said. “This is not an open-ended effort, it never has been. It is reality check time, and we intend to evaluate precisely what the next steps will be.”
Mr Kerry said he would return to Washington to consult with the Obama administration on the next step.
Speaking to reporters in Rabat before travelling to Casablanca for a meeting with Morocco’s king, Mr Kerry said the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks could not continue to occupy so much of his time if the Israelis and Palestinians were unable to take even minor steps toward making the negotiations successful.
Mr Kerry has been the lead player in the administration’s effort to forge a long-elusive deal to end the conflict and for the past 12 days had been conducting furious shuttle diplomacy to salvage the talks as an April 29 deadline loomed.
With little, if any, tangible signs of progress over the course of eight months of talks, the initial goal of a comprehensive deal was scaled down to an outline of what such an agreement would look like.
If the talks do collapse, it would be a huge disappointment to Mr Kerry and could be seen as a foreign policy failure for the administration.
The Obama administration even took the unprecedented step of allowing the possible release of convicted American spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for selling US military secrets to Israel, to be used as an inducement to get Israel to release some Palestinian prisoners.
Every president since Ronald Reagan has refused Israel’s request to release Pollard.
US officials said Mr Kerry had been blindsided by moves by Israeli and Palestinian leaders that affected the negotiations process.
The US top diplomat spoke to both Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Thursday in a desperate bid to bring the two sides back from the brink.
But Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas rejected Mr Kerry’s appeals to withdraw the applications he signed on Tuesday to adhere to 15 international treaties, a Palestinian official said on Friday.
Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ignored appeals to refrain from “unhelpful” tit-for-tat moves and asked officials to draw up a range of tough reprisals.
Yesterday, the Israeli interior ministry announced that it had given the green light for a controversial visitor centre in an Arab neighbourhood of annexed East Jerusalem in what was widely seen as a retaliatory measure.
Israel says Tuesday’s move by Mr Abbas was a clear breach of the undertakings the Palestinians gave when the talks were relaunched last July to pursue no other avenues for recognition of their promised state.
The Palestinians say Israel had already reneged on its own commitments when it failed to release a fourth and final batch of veteran Arab prisoners as scheduled at the weekend, and that the treaty move was their response.
Both sides insisted they remain ready to talk and the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat was to meet US envoy Martin Indyk later on Friday.
But as the steps and counter steps multiplied, the talks looked close to collapse as Mr Netanyahu has asked the head of the Israeli military administration in the occupied West Bank, General Yoav Mordechai, to draw up a range of tough options to punish the Palestinians, Haaretz newspaper reported.
The options under consideration include withholding tax revenues levied by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel briefly imposed the same financially crippling measure in December 2012 to punish the Palestinians’ successful drive for observer state status at the United Nations, over its own strong opposition and that of Washington.
Other options include tightening the restrictions imposed on Palestinian activities in the more than 60 per cent of the West Bank which is under the sole control of the Israeli army.
Tzipi Livni, the justice minister who is Israel’s chief negotiator in the peace talks, told the Palestinians on Thursday that there had been a chance of a belated release of the final batch of prisoners, who had been scheduled to be freed last weekend.
But she said it had been scuppered by the Palestinians’ treaty move.
Some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated yesterday outside Ofer military prison near Ramallah, rallied by the families of those who were meant to be released March 29.
Eight protesters were wounded by gunfire from Israeli troops, medics said.
* With reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
The specs
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Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales
Najlaa Khoury, Archipelago Books
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The five pillars of Islam
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
Mountain%20Boy
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Dirham Stretcher tips for having a baby in the UAE
Selma Abdelhamid, the group's moderator, offers her guide to guide the cost of having a young family:
• Buy second hand stuff
They grow so fast. Don't get a second hand car seat though, unless you 100 per cent know it's not expired and hasn't been in an accident.
• Get a health card and vaccinate your child for free at government health centres
Ms Ma says she discovered this after spending thousands on vaccinations at private clinics.
• Join mum and baby coffee mornings provided by clinics, babysitting companies or nurseries.
Before joining baby classes ask for a free trial session. This way you will know if it's for you or not. You'll be surprised how great some classes are and how bad others are.
• Once baby is ready for solids, cook at home
Take the food with you in reusable pouches or jars. You'll save a fortune and you'll know exactly what you're feeding your child.
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
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Adele: The Stories Behind The Songs
Caroline Sullivan
Carlton Books
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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Sting & Shaggy
44/876
(Interscope)
