On Sept. 2, 2010, a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks began in Washington. The talks, which had been preceded by months of indirect negotiations, collapsed within weeks when Israel's partial moratorium on construction in the occupied West Bank expired; the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, had said before the talks began that he would not continue them without an extension.  Over the next few months, the United States worked to persuade the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to renew a more limited moratorium, offering a significant package of military aid and security guarantees. In December, with no progress in sight, the idea was dropped.  In 2011, the regional and political backdrop to the peace process shifted significantly. Mr. Abbas, despairing of the talks, began focusing on getting the United Nations General Assemly to recognize a Palestinian state, which could increase Palestinian leverage for rolling back Israeli settlements.  As pro-democracy movements swept through the region in the so-called Arab Spring, Israel lost its closest Arab ally when Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was deposed. Palestinian leaders felt pressure to patch up the split between Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement, which governed the West Bank, and the radical group Hamas, which had seized power in Gaza in 2007. On May 4, the two groups signed a reconciliation accord, vowing common cause against Israeli occupation.  Mr. Netanyahu denounced the pact. The Obama administration, which like Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist group, responded more cautiously, but the development clearly added a new round of complications to the restarting of talks.  Two weeks later, Mr. Netanyahu laid out his principles for accepting a Palestinian state, showing greater flexibility on territory but still pursuing a far more hawkish approach than any Palestinian leader is likely to accept. He strongly implied that he would give up the vast majority of the West Bank for a demilitarized Palestinian state. He said Israel needed to hold onto all of Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs in the West Bank, thereby suggesting that he would yield the rest.  On May 19, Mr. Obama for the first time on publicly called for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would create a non-militarized Palestinian state on the basis of Israel’s borders before the 1967 war that led to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, modified by land swaps. It had long been assumed that any peace deal would be based modifications to the 1967 borders, but Israel has resisted making that a starting point for talks, and Mr. Obama is the first American president to take that position. Mr. Netanyahu immediately objected, calling the borders "indefensible'' and counter to earlier American commitments.  At the same time, Mr. Obama's specific reference to a “nonmilitarized” Palestinian state dismayed Palestinians, who have long said that such matters should be decided in negotiations.  On May 24, Mr. Netanyahu outlined his conditions to a joint session of Congress, including conditions the Palestinians have rejected, including an undivided Jerusalem and an Israeli army presence along the Jordan River.  When the talks first broke down in September 2010, American officials worked to win Israeli approval for a new 90-day moratorium on most construction in the West Bank, but gave up in December 2010 after weeks of fruitless haggling. The Obama administration had offered Israelis 20 advanced American fighter jets and other unspecified military aid, as well as American promises not to seek any further moratoriums and to oppose any Palestinian attempt to obtain international recognition of statehood.  Mr. Netanyahu said he supported the deal, but failed to persuade his cabinet to accept it. American officials said they decided to pull the plug because it concluded that even if the 90-day negotiating period materialized, it would not have produced the progress on core issues that the administration originally had hoped for.  In late December, new figures showed that in the three months since Israel ended its settlement construction freeze in the West Bank a settlement-building boom had begun, especially in more remote communities that are least likely to be part of Israel after any two-state peace deal.  In January 2011, a furor broke out among Palestinians when Al Jazeera released 1,600 internal government documents regarding negotiations that took place in 2008 with then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. They show negotiators for both sides discussing concessions on subjects where in public all compromise had been rejected.  They talked about dividing Jerusalem’s residential areas between them and coming to an arrangement for the holy sites that included oversight by an international committee, including several Arab states. The sides also traded numbers of Palestinian refugees permitted to move to Israel. Along with their descendants, they number in the millions today. The Palestinians suggested 10,000 a year over 10 years and the Israelis offered 1,000 a year over five years.  While neither Jerusalem nor the refugee issue was agreed on, the two sides seemed to be coming to terms on the approach. Mr. Olmert, who was forced to leave office due to indictments on corruption charges, has written a memoir that includes his recollections of how close the two sides got.  A spokesman for Mr. Olmert, Yaacov Galanti, said the gaps between the two sides were not great, which proves that Israeli claims that there is no peace partner on the other side are false.  After Mr. Olmert stepped down, the talks stopped and a more hawkish government led by Mr. Netanyahu took office. Mr. Netanyahu has said that he wanted to start the negotiations over, not pick them up where they had left off because they offered too many concessions to the Palestinians.  Palestinian negotiators are hoping to use the concessions Mr. Olmert made — which have never been publicly acknowledged by Israel — as a basis from which to start these negotiations. But Mr. Netanyahu has so far balked at that.  After Mr. Obama took office in 2009, he called on Mr. Netanyahu to freeze building in Israeli settlements in occupied areas of the West Bank, and on Mr. Abbas to improve security and take other steps to build confidence among Israelis.  Mr. Netanyahu rebuffed Mr. Obama, creating a level of friction not seen between the countries in many years. In September 2009, Mr. Netanyahu announced a partial moratorium on construction. It allowed for limited construction of public buildings in West Bank settlements and for the completion of thousands of housing units that were already under construction.  Mr. Abbas initially refused to take part in talks without a complete building freeze. But in 2010, he agreed to engage in indirect talks brokered by George J. Mitchell, the United States special representative to the region.  A second round of talks began at a seaside resort in Egypt on Sept. 14. The next day, Mr. Abbas traveled to Jerusalem for a two-hour session, a gesture of conciliation to the Israelis; Mr. Netanyahu returned the favor by welcoming him with a Palestinian flag.  Israeli officials said that Mr. Netanyahu felt it important for his credibility not to extend the moratorium beyond 10 months. He is also hemmed in by his right-leaning coalition government, which strongly opposes the ban on construction in the West Bank territories that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.  The day after the moratorium ended, bulldozers in the West Bank began laying the foundation for a new 50-unit neighborhood in the Israeli settlement of Ariel as other leaders announced plans to build in Kiryat Arba and Kedumim. Work could eventually begin on some 2,000 approved units.
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