Palestinian, Israeli negotiators to restart peace talks next week

Palestinian and Israeli officials will meet in Washington next week for the first time to have direct negotiations between the two sides since 2010, Palestinian sources said Monday. The move comes a few days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he had succeeded in laying the groundwork for resuming the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, will head the Palestinians delegation to Washington, where they will discuss the basis of the negotiations with their Israeli counterparts. According to the sources, during the meeting, Erekat will put forward the Palestinian view that the negotiations must be based on the two-state solution, with pre-1967 lines as the borders of the future Palestinian state with mutual, slight land swaps. Erekat will stress that the suspension of settlement activities in the West Bank and east Jerusalem on lands Israel occupied in 1967, and releasing long-jailed Palestinians are essential requirements for the peace process, the Palestinian sources said. "The Israeli responses to the Palestinian demands and the extent of progress expected after the first round of negotiations would form an important indication on the fate of negotiations in the next phase," said one of the sources, a Palestinian official speaking on the condition of anonymity. Kerry has visited Israel and the Palestinian territories six times since February to push the two sides to resume negotiations. Palestinian officials said that there was no official Israeli commitment on freezing the settlement building, and that Kerry only made a verbal obligation to the Palestinian leadership that he will press Israel not to endorse any construction during the talks.