Little Hope for Mideast Peace Talks

Both the Israeli and the Palestinian governments immediately accepted the White House’s invitation to start peace talks in Washington in two weeks, but there is little hope among either side that any kind of comprehensive deal can be struck by the president’s deadline of a year, according to analysts familiar with the issue.. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be unwilling to forge an agreement, while the relatively moderate Palestinian leaders are so weak they can’t do so. Mainstream commentators on both sides express a kind of fatalism. A former left-wing Israeli politician said Obama was making a mistake by setting such a short deadline—there’s not enough time to bridge the wide gulf between the two sides; the White House counters that not doing anything would be riskier. Many Palestinians now think that there are too many Israeli settlements in the West Bank to create a contiguous Palestinian state there, but public support for the settlements in Israel is pretty strong.