Israel, PA talks may begin next week: Israeli minister

An Israeli official says talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Tel Aviv regime may begin in Washington next week.

“Things haven’t been settled in a definite matter but the direction is renewing the talks on Tuesday,” Israeli Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom said in a Thursday press conference.

Former Israeli minister for foreign affairs and chief negotiator, Tzipi Livini, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoy, Itzhak Molcho, are reportedly expected to travel to Washington to meet with Saeb Erekat, the top PA negotiator

The Palestinian-Israeli talks were halted in September 2010 over disagreements on Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

The PA had previously demanded that Israel cease all settlement activities before talks can be resumed. Israel has refused to do so and says it will to re-launch talks without any preconditions.

On July 19, US Secretary of State John Kerry said if everything goes as expected, Israel-Palestine negotiations will resume soon.

On the same day, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas rejected Kerry’s proposal for the resumption of talks between Israel and the PA, saying it “considers the Palestinian Authority’s return to negotiations with the occupation to be at odds with the national consensus.”

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.