Palestinian stone throwers clash with Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday following a demonstration by Palestinians to show their support for their President Mahmoud Abbas. Inset: A member of the Israeli security forces aims his weapon during the clashes.

Reuters

Washington

President Barack Obama told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday that it will require tough decisions and risks to achieve peace with Israel and said now is the time for leaders on both sides to “embrace this opportunity.”

In White House talks overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, Abbas said “time is not on our side” in US-brokered negotiations with Israel and called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go ahead with the scheduled release of a final group of Palestinian prisoners by the end of March.

Obama, who met Netanyahu two weeks ago, made clear that he was not giving up on the troubled US-led peace process despite widespread pessimism about reaching a “framework” deal that would extend talks beyond an April deadline.

“It’s very hard,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we’re able to move it forward, and I hope that we can continue to see progress in the coming days and weeks.”

Obama insisted that, after decades of on-off negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the likely parameters of any elusive final peace agreement are well known.

“Everybody understands what the outlines of a peace deal would look like, involving a territorial compromise on both sides based on ‘67 lines with mutually agreed upon swaps that would ensure that Israel was secure but would also ensure that the Palestinians have a sovereign state,” Obama said.

Abbas agreed that a solution should entail a Palestinian state built on borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, though Netanyahu has declared that Israel would never completely return to earlier lines it considered indefensible.

Abbas insisted that the Palestinians, in past international agreements, had already “recognised the state of Israel.”

But he stopped short of reiterating his position on Netanyahu’s demand that Abbas explicitly recognise Israel as a Jewish state if he wanted peace - something the Palestinian president has previously said he will not do.

Looming over the peace effort is the question of whether Israel this month will carry out the release of a final batch of Palestinian prisoners, which it agreed in order restart negotiations last year. US officials fear that if Israel scraps the release the peace talks could break down.

“Mr. President, we have an agreement with Israel that was brokered by Mr. Kerry concerning the release of the fourth batch of prisoners,” Abbas told Obama.