Kerry Says Final Israeli-Palestinian Deal in 9 Months

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed Tuesday to meet again within the next two weeks, aiming to seal a final peace deal in nine months, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said.

The two sides will meet in either Israel or the Palestinian territories and "our objective will be" to reach a "final status agreement over the course of the next nine months," Kerry told reporters after Israelis and Palestinians ended a three-year freeze on talks.

After a morning of talks at the White House with President Barack Obama and at the State Department, the two sides had agreed that all the most contentious issues such as borders and refugees and the fate of Jerusalem would be on the table for discussion.

"The parties have agreed to remain engaged in sustained, continuous and substantive negotiations on the core issues," Kerry said, flanked by Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni and her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat.

"They will meet within the next two weeks in either Israel or the Palestinian Territories in order to begin the process of formal negotiation.

"The parties have agreed here today that all of the final status issues, all of the core issues and all other issues are all on the table for negotiation," Kerry insisted.

"And they are on the table with one simple goal: a view to ending the conflict, ending the claims. Our objective will be to achieve a final status agreement over the course of the next nine months."

The top U.S. diplomat also reiterated his view that time is running out for a two-state solution, insisting "there is no other alternative.

"We all need to be strong in our belief in the possibility of peace, courageous enough to follow through in our faith in it, and audacious enough to achieve what these two peoples have so long aspired to and deserve," he said.

Erakat praised Kerry's dogged efforts to resume the talks, stalled for three years, saying "no one benefits more from the success of this endeavor than Palestinians.

"I'm delighted all issues are on the table and will be resolved without any exceptions. It's time for the Palestinian people to have an independent sovereign state of their own."

And Livni said she hoped that a "spark of hope" would emerge from the new talks.

"It is our task to work together so that we can transform that spark of hope into something real and lasting," she said.

"I believe that history is not made by cynics. It is made by realists who are not afraid to dream. And let us be these people."

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama praised the "courage" of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators when he met with them Tuesday after the relaunch of direct peace talks frozen for three years.

"The president used this opportunity to convey his appreciation to both sides for the leadership and courage they have shown in coming to the table," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Obama also expressed his "personal support for final-status negotiation," Carney said, while agreeing with the two parties to keep the details of the negotiations under wraps.

"All sides agree that it would be most conducive to this process to not read out details of meetings," Carney said. "We're going to abide by that."

Also, the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations made a joint call Tuesday on Israel and the Palestinians not to "undermine trust" as they embark on landmark peace talks.

The diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East said it was determined to support the two sides' "shared commitment to achieve a negotiated two-state solution within the agreed timeframe of nine months."

The Quartet "calls on all parties to take every possible step to promote conditions conducive to the success of the negotiating process and to refrain from actions that undermine trust," said a joint statement.

The group praised the "courageous decision" of Palestinian president Abbas and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu to launch the talks which started in Washington on Monday.

Envoys from the Quartet, which was set up to promote a road map toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians, would meet "soon", the statement said.

"While noting that much hard work lies ahead, the Quartet expresses its hope that renewed negotiations will be substantive and continuous and set a clear path towards a two-state solution, the end of conflict, and lasting peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians," said the statement.

With a cast of characters that has presided over numerous failed Middle East peace efforts, the Obama administration launched a fresh bid earlier on Monday to pull Israel and the Palestinians into substantive negotiations.

Despite words of encouragement, deep skepticism about the prospects for success surrounded the initial discussions, which opened with a dinner hosted by Kerry. He named a former U.S. ambassador to Israel to shepherd what all sides believe will be a protracted and difficult process.

Former envoy Martin Indyk, who played key roles in the Clinton administration's multiple, unsuccessful pushes to broker peace deals between Israel and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians, will assume the day-to-day responsibility for keeping the talks alive for the next nine months.

Kerry called Indyk a "seasoned diplomat" and said he "knows what has worked and he knows what hasn't worked." Neither Kerry nor the State Department would say what has worked in the past, although the fact that there is no peace deal now would seem to indicate that nothing has worked in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian standoff.

President Obama echoed Kerry's hopeful sentiment in a White House statement that said Indyk "brings unique experience and insight to this role, which will allow him to contribute immediately as the parties begin down the tough, but necessary, path of negotiations."

The Israeli side is led by chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister who was active in the Bush's administration's ill-fated Annapolis peace talks with the Palestinians, and Yitzhak Molcho, a veteran adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was part of the Israeli team involved in Obama's two previous attempts to broker negotiations. Those two efforts relied heavily on Dennis Ross, a former Indyk colleague and Mideast peace envoy, and veteran negotiator George Mitchell.

The Palestinian team is led by chief negotiator Erekat and President Mahmoud Abbas' adviser, Mohammed Shtayyeh, both of whom have been major players in failed negotiations with the Israelis since 1991.

Kerry spoke for about 45 minutes with representatives from the Israeli negotiating team and then another roughly 45 minutes with the Palestinian delegation before sitting down for dinner on the top floor of the State Department.

"Not very much to talk about at all," Kerry joked just before starting dinner shortly after 9 p.m.

They sat at a rectangular table — five U.S. officials lining one side and the two Israeli and two Palestinian negotiators on the other — to dine on sweet corn and shell bean soup, grilled grouper, saffron risotto, summer vegetables and apricot upside down cake.

Despite the presence of so many people whose past experience does not include success, Kerry and other officials voiced cautious optimism about the resumption of talks which he painstakingly negotiated during six months of shuttle diplomacy that began with Obama's own trip to Israel in March.

"It sounds like we're lucky to have decades of experience ready to come back to the table and make an effort to push forward," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Previous attempts to get talks started have foundered on Israel's continued construction of Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians and Palestinian attempts to win international recognition as a sovereign state in the absence of a peace deal. Actual negotiations have died because the two sides have been unable to compromise on the most serious disagreements between them: borders, the status of Jerusalem, refugees and security.

With a U.S.-imposed gag order on revealing any details about the substance or framework of the talks, gauging progress will be difficult. But the outlines of any eventual peace deal are fairly well known: a Palestinian state based on the lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel seized east Jerusalem and occupied the Palestinian territories, with agreed land swaps and recognition of a secure, Jewish state of Israel.

But neither side will publicly commit to those goals, and getting there will require major concessions that will be difficult to sell to the Israeli and Palestinian public.

Ahead of the initial discussions on procedures and guidelines for the meetings, which the U.S. hopes will grow into deeper, more substantive talks on the key sticking points, Kerry urged both sides to strive for "reasonable compromises on tough, complicated, emotional and symbolic issues."

He acknowledged that the path ahead would be long and difficult. But he said that Indyk had the respect and confidence of all involved and that his vast experience in Middle East diplomacy could only help.

"Ambassador Indyk is realistic," Kerry said. "He understands that Israeli-Palestinian peace will not come easily and it will not happen overnight. But he also understands that there is now a path forward and we must follow that path with urgency. He understands that to ensure that lives are not needlessly lost, we have to ensure that opportunities are not needlessly lost."

Indyk, 62, will take a leave of absence from his current job as vice president and foreign policy director at the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank.

In announcing Indyk's appointment, Kerry noted the former ambassador had opened the preface to his 2009 book, "Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peacemaking Diplomacy in the Middle East," with lines from the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it would teach us," Kerry quoted.

He did not continue to the next lines as Indyk did in his book:

"But passion and party blind our eyes,"

"And the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern,"

"Which shines only on the waves behind us."