US President Barack Obama vowed today that a deadly Hamas attack in the West Bank "is not going to stop us" in the quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as he opened a Washington summit to relaunch face-to-face negotiations.
Wading into Middle East diplomacy in the face of deep skepticism over his chances for securing an elusive peace deal, Mr Obama condemned as "senseless slaughter" the ambush that killed four Israeli settlers yesterday in the occupied West Bank.
"The message should go out to Hamas and everybody else who is taking credit for these heinous crimes that this is not going to stop us from not only ensuring a secure Israel but also securing a longer lasting peace in which people throughout the region can take a different course," Mr Obama told reporters.
Mr Obama spoke after meeting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he began a series of one-on-one sessions with Middle East leaders attending the US-led peace summit that will culminate tomorrow with the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in 20 months.
The summit marks Mr Obama's riskiest plunge into Middle East diplomacy, not least because he wants the two sides to forge a deal within 12 months for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
The Palestinians want a state in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with its capital in East Jerusalem, whose Old City houses al-Aqsa, Islam's third-holiest shrine, along with the Western Wall, a vestige of Judaism's two ancient temples.
With the clock ticking toward the September 26th expiration of an Israeli settlement construction freeze that could also undermine the talks, Israel's defense minister sounded a conciliatory note about the prospects for sharing Jerusalem, an issue at the heart of the decades-old conflict.
Big obstacles remain to Mr Obama's quest for a two-state solution that has eluded so many of his predecessors. There is also the danger that failure on this front could set back Mr Obama's faltering attempts at winning over the Muslim world as he seeks solidarity against Iran.
Militants from the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas declared war on the talks even before they began and warned of further attacks, underscoring the threat hard-liners pose to the fragile peace process.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr Obama, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would a seek a peace accord "centred around the need to have security arrangements that are able to roll back this kind of terror and other threats to Israel's security."
The attack could make Netanyahu even less likely to accede to Palestinian demands to offer a further freeze in Jewish settlement-building on occupied land in the West Bank.
The September 26th expiration of Israel's 10-month partial moratorium on new housing construction in Jewish settlements could represent an early stumbling block for the peace talks.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who also met Mr Obama privately before a joint White House dinner, has threatened to quit the talks if building resumes on land Israel captured in a 1967 war. Mr Obama's aides have been scrambling for a compromise.
Mr Netanyahu, who heads a government dominated by pro-settler parties like his own, has not given any definitive word on the issue. But his office said he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on last night there was no change in his cabinet's decision to allow the freeze to lapse.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who is attending the summit, wrote in the New York Times that Israeli settlements were blocking the road to a peace deal with the Palestinians, and Israel must extend its settlement moratorium.
Mr Obama will host all the leaders for dinner, the warmup for formal negotiations tomorrow at the State Department.
In the prelude to face-to-face talks eventually expected to tackle volatile core issues that have long defied solution, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barack said the Jewish state would be willing to hand over parts of Jerusalem under a final peace accord.
There was reason to doubt, however, that Barak's rare comments about the need to partition Jerusalem - as a junior member of Mr Netanyahu's coalition government - marked a softening of the rightist prime minister's long-stated refusal to divide the holy city.
"West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 (Israeli) residents will be ours," Mr Barak told the Haaretz newspaper.
"The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs," he added, referring to East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in a 1967 war and annexed as its it capital - a status not recognized abroad.
Commenting on Mr Barak's remarks, a senior Israeli official traveling with Mr Netanyahu said: "Jerusalem is on the table at talks, but the prime minister's position is that Jerusalem must remain undivided." Summit meetings went ahead in the aftermath of the West Bank shooting attack.
Militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which opposes peace with Israel, claimed responsibility. A pregnant woman was among the dead.
Palestinian leaders committed to the peace process joined Israel and the United States in condemning the attack. Mr Abbas's security forces arrested 150 Hamas members in the West Bank after the attack.
Israel's defence minister said his government would be willing to hand over parts of Jerusalem in peace talks with the Palestinians to be launched by US president Barack Obama.
Ehud Barak made his comments ahead of a dinner hosted by Mr Obama at the White House in Washington tonight.
Mr Obama brought Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas together for face-to-face negotiations after months of US-mediated indirect talks. But he faces deep scepticism about his chances of success.
Mr Barak's rare comments about the need to partition Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the conflict, could signal Mr Netanyahu's willingness to divide the holy city in any final peace deal with Palestinians.
Mr Netanyahu has publicly resisted ceding the eastern, Arab part of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
"West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhouds that are home to 200,000 (Israeli) residents will be ours," Mr Barak told the Haaretz newspaper.
"The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs," he added, referring to East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He said a "special regime" will be in place in the Old City, where al-Aqsa, Islam's third-holiest shrine, abuts the Western Wall, the vestige of Judaism's two ancient temples and a Jewish prayer plaza.
Reuters