PLO, Hamas reject U.S. talk on “Jewish state of Israel”

Obama brings Abbas, Netanyahu together, stresses illegitimacy of Israeli settlements

U.S. president insists peace talks have to resume

Netanyahu says won’t back down on having Palestinians acknowledge Israel as “Jewish”

Hamas on Thursday accused Israel of carrying out a Holocaust against Palestinians, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at the UN General Assembly.

"Israel is the one carrying out a Holocaust against the Palestinians," Sami Abu Zahri, a spokesman for the democratically elected Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Although Israel was created by a UN resolution over 60 years ago, it is known for its defiance of the international community, especially when concerning UN resolutions on its illegal occupation of Arab land.

The hardliner used his address to the annual meetings of heads of state and government to blast the United Nations for its report criticizing Israel for using excessive force in its assault on the Gaza Strip eight months ago.

He unleashed a tirade against the findings of the UN probe into the Gaza assault, and warned it could affect how Israel reacts in the future towards the Palestinians.

He linked Israel's willingness to make future concessions to the Palestinians, to how other nations react to the report.

While the UN investigation found that both Israel and Palestinian groups had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, it reserved some of its harshest language for the actions taken by Israel against the civilian population in the densely-populated Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu also addressed Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, saying again that he would accept a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel, in reference to what is seen by critics as a 'non-State'.

However, he offered no olive branches to the Palestinians and did not refer to calls by the Palestinians and the US to freeze illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem.

A lone Palestinian delegate walked out as Netanyahu defended Israel's December-January assault on the Gaza Strip that killed 1,400 mainly civilian Palestinians.

Bristling with impatience, President Barack Obama sternly prodded Israeli and Palestinian leaders to re-launch Mideast peace negotiations Tuesday, grasping a newly personal role in their historic standoff. He won an awkward, stone-faced handshake but no other apparent progress beyond a promise to talk about more talks.

There had been hopes for weeks that there might be more to show from the first meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas since Netanyahu took office in March -- perhaps even a dramatic announcement by Obama of the resumption of the Mideast peace negotiations that broke off over a year ago.

That wasn't to be. Despite months of effort, the sides remain far apart on a staunch Palestinian precondition for talks: that Israel halt all construction of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory. Obama has publicly echoed that demand to Israeli leaders -- though the Palestinians noted with displeasure that he used the word ``restrain'' on Tuesday rather than ``halt'' or ``freeze.''

The president hosted the two foes at his New York hotel during a marathon day of diplomacy on the sidelines of this week's United Nations General Assembly gathering. It was a high-stakes gambit that could prove to be a timely personal intervention into a decades-old dispute that Obama has made a presidential priority or a flop that damages Obama's global credibility on a broader scale.

Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, said the president took the risk because he believes the moment is uniquely ripe for progress -- and because he felt an in-person display of his rising impatience could help.

So, instead of announcing a new round of peace talks, Obama announced a newly intensified effort to bring them about.

He tasked Mitchell with continuing to meet with Israeli and Palestinian officials while in New York this week, invited negotiators from both sides to come to Washington next week and asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to report to him in mid-October on the status. This tightly compressed time frame, even if not a real deadline, was designed to inject urgency into the process and ``concentrate the mind,'' said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the private meetings.

``Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations -- it is time to move forward,'' Obama declared, displaying an unusual level of public frustration as he prepared to sit down with Netanyahu and Abbas for joint talks after meeting with each separately. ``We cannot continue the same pattern of taking tentative steps forward and then stepping back.''

Spanning over two hours all together, the talks found all leaders promising to work to resume peace negotiations but also often using language described as ``blunt'' and ``direct.''

Both leaders kept stressing with Obama their own priorities and fears. Obama in return emphasized a need to take risks and give up some things for a bigger goal, said a senior administration official.

According to Mitchell, Obama told the leaders at one point: ``The only reason to hold public office is to get things done.''

Neither Netanyahu nor Abbas spoke publicly at the meeting site. In a moment deep in symbolism, however, they engaged in an unsmiling and seemingly reluctant handshake at the start of the sit-down, with dozens of cameras clicking to record the moment.

``We can do a lot more if we talk to each other,'' Netanyahu said later on CNN. ``The possibilities are there. Let's get on with it.''

Obama praised both Israelis and Palestinians for positive steps. But he made clear they haven't done nearly enough.

Palestinians, Obama said, must build on recent security improvements and ``do more to stop incitement'' -- meaning that they must stop those who encourage or carry out attacks on Israel. But Abbas' Fatah government is severely hampered in doing so, as Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are led by the government's Islamic militant Hamas rivals.

As for the Israelis, Obama praised their moves to increase Palestinians' freedom of movement and to discuss ``important steps to restrain settlement activity.'' But Israeli officials ``need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues,'' he said sharply. In the private talks, he also chided the Israelis for suggesting that new peace talks would not resume on the same terms as last year's round, in which the fate of Jerusalem was expected to be on the table. Netanyahu now says Jerusalem if off limits for discussion.

Israeli's intense concern about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program came up briefly, but was not a focus, the official said.

An Abbas aide, Yasser Abd-Rabbo, said that in the trilateral meeting Abbas restated his demand for a complete Israeli settlement freeze. Netanyahu, in turn, demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians argue that under previous understandings they are not required to do that. Netanyahu also told ABC News that he would not accept the settlement issue as a precondition to talks.

Mitchell seemed to give the Israeli side a bit of boost by saying that despite the recent months' focus on the settlement showdown, the Obama administration does not see resolving it as necessary to move to ``final status'' negotiations. ``We do not believe in preconditions, we do not impose them and we urge others not to impose them,'' he said.

That message was delivered more directly in private, the official said, with Obama warning Palestinians against making ``the perfect the enemy of the good'' on settlements.

But even the fact that Obama's ``restrain'' word choice rankled Palestinians showed just how difficult the terrain is for Mideast peace.

``I think it will be a problem, not only from the point of view of the Palestinians, but I believe it should be from the international community'' because it deviates from previous frameworks, ``including the need for settlement activity to stop, and stop completely,'' said Abbas' prime minister, Salaam Fayyad.

Still, Obama said: ``Despite all the obstacles, despite all the history, despite all the mistrust, we have to find a way forward. ... It is absolutely critical that we get this issue resolved.''

Obama's 12-hour day of international intervention began with an address to a climate change summit, convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to create momentum for crucial international climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

With over 100 world leaders in attendance, Obama urged all to step up their efforts to combat global warming by curbing heat-trapping emissions. He held out the United States as a serious partner, even though he has made little progress in getting a bill through Congress to set mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

``The journey is hard. And we don't have much time left to make it,'' the president said.

Obama also met with Chinese President Hu Jintao at a fraught time in the Washington-Beijing relationship, saying he wants more cooperative ties with the Asian economic and political powerhouse. Despite a dispute over new tariffs Obama has imposed on Chinese tire imports, Hu agreed that the relationship must stay on ``the right course.''

Over lunch, America's first black president hosted two dozen sub-Saharan African leaders for discussions about boosting opportunities for young people in their poverty-stricken nations. In the evening, he delivered a keynote speech to former President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative and was attending U.N. leaders dinner.

Obama's New York meetings were a precursor to another turn on center stage later this week, when he hosts the G-20 summit of leading industrial and developing nations in Pittsburgh.

Top diplomats from the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, which make a group known as the Quartet, met here Thursday and urged Israel and the Palestinians to create conditions for the re-launching of negotiations.

In a statement issued after the meeting, the Quartet called on the two sides to "act on their previous agreements and obligations... to create the conditions for the resumption of negotiations in the near term."

The Quartet is a diplomatic group in search of peace in the Middle East. It supports the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning an independent Palestine can live in peace with a secure Israel.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union Javier Solana, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, and Quartet Representative Tony Blair were present at the meeting.

The statement welcomed the meetings Tuesday between U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as "significant steps toward the re-launching of direct, bilateral negotiations as part of a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

"Recognizing the significance of the Arab Peace Initiative, the Quartet urges regional government to support the resumption of bilateral negotiations, enter into a structural regional dialogue on issues of common concern, and take steps toward normalization of relations across the region in the context of progress towards peace," the statement said.

"The Quartet stresses the urgency of a durable resolution to the Gaza crisis and calls for a solution that addresses Israel's legitimate security concerns, including an end to weapons smuggling into Gaza," the statement said.

Meanwhile, "the Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth," the statement said.

Half a million Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

The World Court based in The Hague has ruled all the settlements illegal and U.S. president Obama has pressed Israel to halt all settlement activities as part of a bid to revive peace talks under which the Palestinians would gain independence alongside Israel.

The Quartet "calls on the Palestinian Authority to continue to make every effort to improve law and order, to fight violent extremism, and to end incitement," the statement added.

Netanyahu has said he will not drop his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state in peace negotiations that the United States wants to revive.

"I told Abu Mazen I believe peace hinges first on his readiness to stand before his people and say, 'We ... are committed to recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people'," Netanyahu told Israel Radio in an interview aired Thursday, referring to President Mahmoud Abbas.

"I will not drop this subject and other important issues under any final peace agreement," Netanyahu said.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday brought the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for the first time since Netanyahu came to power in March and urged them to revive stalled peace negotiations soon.

The Palestinians have rejected Israel's demand that they recognize it as a Jewish state. They say Israel should meet its previous commitments to fully halt settlement activity in the occupied West Bank before talks can resume.

Netanyahu has rejected this demand and Israeli officials say he has offered a nine-month construction freeze.

Netanyahu will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York Thursday and Israeli officials say his speech will focus on Iran's disputed nuclear program, which Israel deems as a threat to its existence.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blasted Israel's "inhumane policies" toward the Palestinians in his speech at the United Nations Wednesday and several delegations walked out after he made apparently anti-Semitic remarks directed at Israel.