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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Abbas inching closer to direct talks

The Middle East Quartet is preparing to announce movement toward direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders as early as next week, as U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell scrambles to get buy-in from both sides. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has all but signed on to the move to direct talks, which would begin in early ...

By Josh Rogin

August 10, 2010, 6:41 PM

The Middle East Quartet is preparing to announce movement toward direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders as early as next week, as U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell scrambles to get buy-in from both sides.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has all but signed on to the move to direct talks, which would begin in early September, a U.S. official tells The Cable. The Quartet’s announcement will come in the form of an invitation to both parties to join direct talks. The invitation will mention that all final-status issues will be on the table but is not expected to include Abbas’s demands for progress on these issues before direct talks begin.

The official said that following Mitchell’s Tuesday meeting in Ramallah with Abbas, the administration believes the Palestinian leader will agree to direct talks even though he will not get his chief demand, that Israel agree to a continued settlement freeze as a condition of moving forward.

"His hand has been forced," by the American side, the official said, adding that the location of direct talks had not been decided but would probably be in a third country, such as Egypt. The United States will remain a player in the direct talks, which will also have senior Arab representation from a country yet to be determined.

"Things are looking up. It was a good meeting," the official said, referring to Mitchell’s talks with Abbas.

Mitchell will now meet Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before returning to Washington. Netanyahu has often said he wants to proceed to direct talks immediately, so expectations are high that he will agree to the terms laid out in the forthcoming Quartet statement.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley warned reporters Tuesday that the deal to move to direct talks is not yet signed and sealed.

"I think we’re getting closer. But since George Mitchell is a baseball fan, as he would say, we have not yet reached home plate," he said. "We are pushing the parties to agree to direct negotiations. And we think after today’s meeting, we are closer to reaching that point than we were yesterday."

In recent days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been working the phones on the issue, speaking with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Quartet special representative Tony Blair, and the issue came up in her conversation Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The U.S. official said that the Quartet statement is likely to be largely consistent with previous statements on the issue, meaning that it won’t break new ground on contentious points.

That spells trouble for the talks and also for Abbas, who is struggling to maintain power and legitimacy among his own constituency, said Daniel Levy, senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

"The Quartet statement only becomes meaningful if the language in the invitation moves the ball forward and that is not expected to be the case," he said. "Abbas has not had political trust or legitimacy for a very long time now. For those who have been trying to build him up as a negotiator with power, this only further emaciates him."

Moreover, the fact that the Quartet is declining to go further in addressing issues such as borders, security, Jerusalem, and settlements means that the direct talks are likely to be just as unproductive as the proximity talks have been, according to Levy.

"The goal is a two-state solution. No one in the region sees or believes the direct talks in this format will be effective in moving this forward."

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin