Giving US efforts a chance, Ramallah reportedly suspends recognition bids

The Palestinian Authority will temporarily freeze attempts to gain statehood recognition by world bodies, in a bid to give US-brokered peace efforts a chance, Haaretz reported Thursday, citing unnamed senior Israeli and Palestinian officials.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas passed a resolution in the Fatah central council stating that Ramallah would give efforts to “break the deadlock” a limited amount of time, the paper reported.

Both sources, one from each side, said the freeze would remain in effect for about eight weeks, starting from late March. The resolution states that it will cut the effort short should Israel try to thwart peace efforts, including if Jerusalem pushes ahead with a plan to develop the E1 corridor in the West Bank east of the capital.

The news comes days before a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attempting to move the sides closer to resuming talks, which last took place in 2010.

Among the unilateral measures reportedly to be put off, the Palestinians will suspend an application to the International Criminal Court to gain state status, which would allow them to file complaints against Israel for war crimes.

Since gaining non-member observer state status in the UN in November, Ramallah has threatened several times to turn to the ICC over the plight of prisoners and Israeli settlement building.

Washington, which has significantly ramped up peace efforts in the region since a visit by US President Barack Obama last month, has been vocal in opposition to the Palestinians going to world bodies unilaterally. The Palestinians may extend the freeze should they see progress in US efforts, Haaretz reported.

Still, expectations are low for any breakthrough on Kerry’s trip, which begins Saturday.

“His diplomacy will be based on what he hears from the parties,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday. Kerry, she said, will be making clear that both sides have to want to get back to the negotiating table “and that they’ve also got to recognize— both parties — that compromises and sacrifices are going to have to be made if we’re going to be able to help.”

Kerry is going at a precarious time. Since Tuesday, Israel and Gazan terrorists have engaged in the heaviest fighting since a ceasefire was declared in November. Gazans fired several rockets into southern Israel, and Israel responded with its first airstrike on the Strip since the fighting subsided. No injuries were reported on either side.

There has also been an uptick in West Bank violence, since the death of a Palestinian inmate of cancer on Tuesday. Late Wednesday, Israeli forces shot and killed a teenage Palestinian, whom the IDF said threw a Molotov cocktail at an army position.

Kerry had planned to leave Monday for talks in London and then South Korea, China and Japan. But officials said he moved up his departure to Saturday for a first stop in Turkey, where he’ll seek to build on recent efforts by that nation and Israel to repair ties and coordinate on stemming violence in Syria. Kerry then travels to Jerusalem and to Ramallah in the West Bank, which he visited with Obama last month before returning to Israel a second time.

US officials say Kerry is primarily interested in gauging what the Israelis and the Palestinians are willing to do to restart direct negotiations that have been mostly frozen for the past 4½ years. He’ll meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas.

Trying to avoid raising expectations unrealistically, Nuland said Kerry’s trip isn’t the start of a new era of shuttle diplomacy, a concept that got its start with secretary of state Henry Kissinger during his regular travels back-and-forth to end the 1973 Mideast War and secure peace between Israel and some of its neighbors. Similar efforts took place under later secretaries James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Condoleezza Rice.