Mitchell meets Netanyahu (UPDATED)

After talks in London Wednesday, U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a joint statement calling the discussions "very productive."

"They agreed on the importance of restarting meaningful negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and working toward a comprehensive peace, and that all sides need to take concrete steps toward peace," their statement said. "The Prime Minister and the Senator made good progress today, and an Israeli delegation will meet Senator Mitchell next week in the United States to continue the conversation."

Heading into the talks, several Washington Middle East hands expressed the belief that the parties are getting close to an agreement on resuming Middle East peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Syria, and on resuming normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors in the fall.

But with U.S. officials typically tightlipped after the meeting, it wasn’t immediately clear if Mitchell and Netanyahu were able to bridge differences in the meeting in particular on the settlements freeze issue to advance the process. "We want to keep these negotiations in a confidential, diplomatic track," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday. "And I’m not going to try and characterize what the prime minister has said and I’m not going to try and characterize where we’re going to come out on the issue of settlement.  We are in a sensitive time."

Follow-up meetings between U.S. and Israeli officials are due to take place next week in Washington, Kelly said.

"What did they produce?" a former senior Israeli official said, after reading the joint statement. "If there was ‘progress,’" he added, "they’ll save it to [announce] when he meets Obama," at the UN General Assembly opening session in New York next month.

The Obama administration has been expected to try to announce some version of its broad peace plan principles and a rough timeline for proceeding around the time of the UN powwow. 

"My understanding is that Mitchell does not favor publishing a grand US plan, but wants gradualism to settle in," the former senior Israeli official said.

Some sort of peace conference, provisionally envisaged to be held in the fall, could launch such discussions. Western diplomats have said Russia and France are both interested in hosting such an event, if the parties decide to go that route. Veteran Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller has described the emerging Obama-led peace process as "Madrid Plus," and has described the settlement freeze details Mitchell and Netanyahu are approaching as unprecedented in scope, though he remains skeptical that Israelis and Palestinians can bridge yawning differences over the issues of borders, refugee return and Jerusalem to ultimately achieve a peace deal.

Mitchell arrived in London Tuesday with his team, including the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa Dan Shapiro. In meetings with news editors in London Monday, Netanyahu seemed to describe Israeli and U.S. positions moving closer together on a settlements deal, policy towards Iran, and other issues, according to sources familiar with the discussion.

Washington’s policy to Iran is not being altered to get Israeli buy-in to the peace process, U.S. officials said, noting that the offer to engage Iran both stands and is genuine. That said, one said, if the prevailing recent sense in Washington that Iran is unlikely to meaningfully engage in the timetable that the Obama administration has long telegraphed is reassuring to the Israelis and helps move the Middle East process forward, that is a useful side benefit.

Earlier this week, the State Department’s Kelly had tried to manage expectations of what might come out of the London Mitchell-Netanyahu meetings. "There have been some reports that we’re close to a breakthrough," Kelly said at a press conference Monday. "But any reports that we’ve come to an agreement, or that we expect one on Wednesday necessarily, I would have to call premature. We’re getting closer to laying this foundation where everybody’s comfortable to coming and sitting down and talking."

Some observers said Washington and Jerusalem appear to be trying to iron out last, nitty gritty details about a relatively small number of exceptions to a temporary freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and regarding Jewish residence in East Jerusalem.

"We’d prefer a freeze that includes every single structure and is permanent," wrote Americans for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman, a former State Department Middle East hand.  "But let’s remember:  a freeze is not an end in itself.  The goal here is to get a freeze that is politically significant and sufficiently credible to help launch serious negotiations that, if they succeed, will render the details of the freeze irrelevant, since a final status agreement will resolve the issue, once and for all."