Rice tours flashpoint West Bank city
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 18:29:00 11/08/2008
Filed Under: International peace processes, Foreign affairs & international relations
JENIN -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday toured the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin where hundreds of Palestinian police have deployed as part of US-sponsored peace efforts.
The site of fierce clashes during the Palestinian uprising which broke out in 2000, Jenin has become a showcase for president Mahmud Abbas's efforts to reassert his authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the two sides renewed peace talks nearly a year ago.
The top US diplomat's convoy passed through Israeli army checkpoints at the entrance to Jenin and went directly to the city's hospital where Rice inaugurated a wing renovated by US development aid.
She then met Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad together with the US security coordinator in the region, General Keith Dayton, who has helped to revamp the Palestinian Authority's security forces.
The more than 1,200-strong security forces have pressed a crackdown largely aimed at members of the Islamist Hamas movement, which seized power in the Gaza Strip in June after routing Abbas's forces.
Israel, which has welcomed Abbas's efforts, nevertheless remains in full control in the occupied territory and regularly carries out raids in Palestinian towns including Jenin.
Rice arrived in the region on Thursday for talks ahead of a Sunday summit in Egypt with the international Quartet of peace sponsors during which Israeli and Palestinian leaders are expected to reaffirm their commitment to the process launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November.
On Friday, Rice said that Palestinians should soon have their own state, but also made it clear she did not expect the sides to meet their goal of signing a peace deal before Barack Obama moves into the White House on January 20.
"They are dignified people and I am certain the day is coming soon when they have a state that will be in accordance with that great national dignity," she said after meeting Abbas.
In the absence of an accord, Rice is pushing the two sides to define the outlines of a deal before she hands over the thorny Middle East dossier to an Obama administration.
"The Annapolis process is vital, it is vibrant and it continues," she said, even though little tangible process has been achieved, with core issues dealing with the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state still to be resolved.
Rice criticized continued construction activity in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, calling it damaging to the atmosphere of negotiations -- "and the parties' actions should encourage confidence, not undermine it."
Peace efforts have also been hobbled by the division of the Palestinian territories into a West Bank where the secular Abbas holds sway and a Gaza Strip run by Hamas.
The slow-moving peace process has been further dragged down by the political turmoil surrounding the resignation of Israel's scandal-plagued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that has led to the scheduling of snap elections in February.
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