Last Minute Push by Kerry: Amman Meeting with Abbas

With only days left in US Secretary of State John Kerry’s mandate for brokering a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, the American interlocutor is pressing for an extension and some sign of life in the process. On Wednesday, Kerry will leave the Obama entourage currently in Europe and fly to Amman for a last-ditch session with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to address the April 30 deadline for thee talks and the March 29 date for the fourth and final phase of the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel amid speculation that Israel will not let the final 26 prisoners go because there has been no progress in the talks. Kerry is also expected to confer with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during the course of his trip and, presumably, will return to Rome for Thursday’s meeting between President Obama and Pope Francis. The release of violent prisoners has been enormously unpopular across the political spectrum in Israel. Further confounding Kerry’s effort is the difference of opinion between the Israelis and the Palestinians: the former believing the prisoner release is tied to progress in the talks the latter believing the release is an unbreakable commitment. On Tuesday, a group of opposition Israeli lawmakers asked Netanyahu to switch the prisoner release for a “settlement freeze” – the end of all construction in communities located on land Israel acquired in the 1967 war – the key demand of the Palestinians before and during the Kerry-brokered peace process. The Netanyahu government has not responded to the proposal. In Kuwait on Tuesday, Abbas told a meeting of the Arab League that Israel was adding new demands in order to sabotage the talks.