JERUSALEM - The Israeli government decided Thursday to suspend U.S.-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians because of an agreement the Palestinians announced Wednesday between two rival factions, one of which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
After a meeting of top ministers that lasted nearly all day, Israel said it would freeze the peace talks at least for the five-week period in which the Palestinians said they would form a new unity government based on their reconciliation agreement.
Beyond that, Israel said it would not resume negotiations with any government backed by Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that Israel, like the United States, considers a terrorist organization.
“Whoever chooses the terrorism of Hamas does not want peace,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement circulated by his office. The statement promised unspecified retaliatory measures against the Palestinians.
The agreement between Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip, and the Palestine Liberation Organization,which is dominated by the more moderate Fatah party and governs the West Bank, “was signed even as Israel is making efforts to advance the negotiations with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said. “It is the direct continuation of the Palestinians’ refusal to advance the negotiations.”
The peace talks, begun at American urging last summer, were far from reaching a resolution and were due to end in five days.
The talks were stalemated for months and had been on the brink of collapse since April 2, when the Palestinians, frustrated by Israel’s failure to keep a promise to release a group of Palestinian prisoners, moved to join 15 international conventions against Israel’s wishes.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his peace envoy, Martin Indyk, have been working to find a formula under which the parties would extend the talks.
Many analysts saw Wednesday’s reconciliation deal as a ploy by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to press Israel into making concessions to keep the talks going. Instead, it seems to have provided Netanyahu with a pretext for walking away from them.
Abbas “basically miscalculated,” said Hillel Frisch, a professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University who specializes in Palestinian politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “They were both in it to appease the Americans and wanted to blame each other for the failure of the talks. By moving with Hamas, they played into Israeli hands.”
After the reconciliation deal drew harsh reactions from Israel and Washington, Palestinian leaders had sought Thursday to soften its effect on the peace process.
Jibril Rajoub, a top official in Abbas’ Fatah faction, said the new government would recognize Israel and renounce violence, meeting the conditions set by the “Quartet” of Middle East peacemakers - the United States, United Nations, Russia and the European Union - that Hamas has repeatedly rejected.
“The government of national consent that will be established, headed by Abu Mazen, will declare clearly and unequivocally that it accepts the Quartet’s conditions,” Rajoub said, using Abbas’ nickname in an interview on Israel’s Army Radio channel. “There is no cause for concern.”
For its part, Hamas signaled that it was drawing a distinction between its own views and those of the unity government it was joining and that there was no need for Hamas to recognize Israel.
“You don’t need organizations to recognize Israel,” Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, told Ynet, an Israeli news website. “It’s enough that the Palestine Liberation Organization - the representative of the Palestinian people - recognizes the State of Israel.”
As for whether his party would renounce violence, Hamad said the question would be worked out in negotiations with Fatah over the next few weeks.
Kerry said Thursday that the U.S. isn’t ready to write off the peace negotiations, saying, “There is always a way forward,” but he spoke privately with Abbas to express his disapproval of the plans to create a reconciliation government with Hamas.
Kerry said at the State Department that Israeli and Palestinian leaders need to make necessary compromises so that the nine months of negotiations can continue after Tuesday’s deadline. If they won’t, he said, peace “becomes very elusive.”
“We will never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities for peace,” Kerry said. “We believe it is the only way to go. But right now, obviously, it’s at a very difficult point and the leaders themselves have to make decisions. It’s up to them.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times and by Lara Jakes of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 04/25/2014