U.S. officials don’t expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict anytime soon, despite his plan to host a meeting between leaders of both sides.
“If you don’t have the right climate for [negotiations] to be successful, then it’s not worth having,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.
Toner was careful not to criticize the meeting too directly, but he implied that the United States doesn’t think that the conditions are right for a productive meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“We continue to call on both sides to demonstrate their commitment to a two-state solution and to lay a groundwork for a successful negotiation,” he said. “I think we’re concerned that things might be moving in the opposite direction given on the one hand – and we’ve expressed our concern about this – ongoing Israeli settlement activity, but equally we’ve been troubled by the incitement to violence, I think most recently the Fatah Facebook post that glorified the terrorist attacks on the Munich Olympics where 11 innocent Israeli athletes were killed.”
Toner said that the Obama administration is “not at all” threatened by the prospect of Putin trying to mediate between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a role that has long been reserved for American leaders. “I don’t want to cast too much aspersion on this effort,” he also said. “We need to make sure any talks, face-to-face talks, have the right climate in which to succeed in.”
Russian diplomatic officials have continued a trend of developing relationships with U.S. allies in their neighborhood. The announcement comes on the heels of news that Putin will travel to Japan in December, which followed weeks of Russia rehabilitating its relationship with Turkey, a member of NATO whose leaders have been critical recently of the United States.
