White House push to revive Mideast peace talks foundering

The mediators “will come together and will compare notes about where we are and plot a course forward,’’ State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Friday.

Yet repeated visits to Israel and the West Bank last month by US envoys have produced no tangible results. That’s been the case, too, in recent talks in Washington between US officials and their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts.

This past week, the new US special Mideast peace envoy, David Hale, and White House adviser Dennis Ross pressed the chief Palestinian peace negotiator on one of the biggest points of contention, a Palestinian plan to win UN recognition as an independent state.

Israel and the United States support an eventually-independent Palestine but oppose the attempt to establish one without negotiation with the Jewish state.

In a sign of the intractability of the decades-long deadlock, negotiator Saeb Erekat said immediately after Wednesday’s meeting that the Palestinians were more determined than ever to win recognition when the UN General Assembly meets in September. Erekat said those opposing the Palestinians need to “rethink their position.’’

The measure probably will pass, providing the Palestinians with increased diplomatic power, even if independence still will need the council’s approval. The United States would surely veto any such resolution.

One US official privately described the overall atmosphere surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as gloomy. A second termed it depressing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential meetings.

The deadlock had split the United States and its allies about how to restart the talks. Until last week, the United States had resisted European calls for the meeting tomorrow, believing there was nothing new to discuss, officials said.

The principals at the meeting will be Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The United States and the Europeans want direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume before the Palestinians bring their independence case to the UN.

The Palestinians have sent officials to lobby governments around the world for support; Israel is engaged in a determined counter-effort.

Palestinian officials might be persuaded to withdraw the draft. But with the peace process essentially frozen for the past two years, Washington has struggled to offer an alternative path. It hasn’t even been able to get Israel to stop settlement building in areas the Palestinians hope to include in their state.