Egypt wants peace talks

Jerusalem – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for a resumption of Israel-Palestinian peace talks when he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Sisi’s office said yesterday.

Netanyahu, writing on Twitter, said his talks with Sisi focused on “regional developments”. He did not elaborate.

Sisi “stressed the importance of resuming the negotiations between the two sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, to reach a just and a comprehensive solution based on a two-state solution and in accordance with the international treaties”, according to a presidential statement.

Egypt has also been working to broker a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s dominant Hamas Islamist movement amid frequent violence along the Israel-Gaza border.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been suspended since 2014 and efforts to revive them have not been successful.

Netanyahu and Sisi convened for their previously announced talks several hours after US President Donald Trump said he wanted a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in what had appeared to be the clearest expression yet of his administration’s support for such an outcome.

But later on Wednesday Trump told a news conference he would be open to a one-state solution if that was the preference of the parties themselves.

Netanyahu, a right-wing politician who rarely utters publicly the words “Palestinian state” – a concept he conditionally endorsed in 2009 but which far-right coalition partners oppose – said he was not taken by surprise by Trump’s initial remarks.

In a statement, Netanyahu said he was confident a promised US peace plan would back Israel’s demand to maintain control of the West Bank, a territory it occupied in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

Palestinians are boycotting Trump’s peace efforts. – Reuters