Rice Says Israeli-Palestinian Peace Is in U.S. Interests

7 November 2008 By Merle D. Kellerhals Jr. Staff Writer

United States will continue to support peace efforts

Washington — The Palestinians and Israelis have demonstrated a brave commitment to substantive talks in an effort to reach a comprehensive peace settlement, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice said at a news briefing that she wanted to assure the Israelis and Palestinians “the United States will continue to support and facilitate the efforts of the parties to reach a lasting peace.  The United States has a national interest in sustaining that progress.”

Rice said the current negotiations should not be viewed as a failure even though a peace accord is unlikely to be reached by the end of this year as many had hoped.  “While we may not yet be at the finish line, I am quite certain that if Palestinians and Israelis stay on the Annapolis course, they are going to cross that finish line and can do so relatively soon,” she said at a November 7 press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on the West Bank.

President Bush relaunched peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians with a November 2007 conference at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in hopes of reaching an accord that ends the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict and establishing a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel.

Bush is the first American president to call for Palestinian statehood and to get the talks going again after nearly a decade, Rice said.  The secretary is on a four-day diplomatic mission to Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Egypt.

Rice travels to Jordan before concluding her mission at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for a meeting with the “Quartet” for Middle East peace mediators — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.  The purpose of the Quartet meeting is to secure international support for sustaining the peace process until a two-state solution can be reached, Rice said.

Rice told journalists that a diplomatic mission of this magnitude is built “brick-by-brick, day-by-day.”

“It is a process in which human dignity can overcome old wounds and old differences,” she said.  “President Bush’s vision of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel doesn’t come and will not come in a single, dramatic moment, but as the result of methodical, sustained, sincere initiative to conclude a final agreement that benefits both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Core issues to be resolved in the peace talks include the final borders of a Palestinian state, the future of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, water rights, and future relations between the two states.

This diplomatic trip across the region is Rice’s eighth since the Annapolis Conference in November a year ago.

A transcript of Rice's remarks is available on America.gov.