Hoping to defuse a fight between friends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed Thursday to meet next week in Washington to confront face to face an embarrassing dispute over Israeli land claims.
The Obama administration's special envoy for Mideast peace, George Mitchell, prepared to return to the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Netanyahu called Clinton on Thursday. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to provide details of the conversation, which he described as the Israeli prime minister's response to Clinton's call last week in which she harshly criticized Israel's announcement of additional Jewish settlement housing in east Jerusalem.
"They discussed specific actions that might be taken to improve the atmosphere for progress toward peace," the department said in a statement released by Clinton's traveling party. She is in Moscow, where she will attend a meeting of Middle East peace mediators on Friday.
U.S. diplomats had expressed irritation that Netanyahu had not called before then with an explanation of the housing plan.
Crowley said U.S. officials will review Netanyahu's response and "continue our discussions with both sides to keep proximity talks moving forward."
‘Confidence-building measures’
Netanyahu's office said the prime minister clarified Israeli policy in the call with Clinton and suggested "mutual confidence-building measures" by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Netanyahu planned to be in Washington next week for the annual gathering of the premier pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Clinton was scheduled to speak to the group on Monday.
Crowley said Mitchell will fly to the Mideast this weekend and hold separate talks with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Relations between Israel and its the United States, its main backer, suffered when Israel unveiled the housing plans during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden last week.
The construction announcement, which Clinton has called "insulting," has jeopardized indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians that the United States announced last week after months of effort.
Those talks may be further undermined by more violence in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where Israeli aircraft bombed a target on Friday after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave killed a Thai worker in Israel.
Netanyahu on probation?
U.S. officials declined all comment on precisely what steps Netanyahu had proposed.
In an unsourced report on its Web site, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the measures were likely to include the release of Palestinian prisoners, the removal of West Bank checkpoints and the possible transfer of West Bank land to Palestinian control.
Chefetz said Netanyahu had "clarified" Israeli policies, presumably about settlements and Jerusalem, a city Israel sees as its capital although this is not recognized internationally.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, to be capital of a future state that they seek for the occupied West Bank.
"I think they do want to defuse but also they are aware that Netanyahu is not agreeing to anything of real consequence and is staying deep within his own comfort zone," said Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation think tank in Washington.
"(The) U.S. will want to see what he actually implements and in a way to keep him on probation," Levy said. "The Palestinians will probably reluctantly find themselves in indirect talks, unless Gaza escalates dramatically."
Meeting in Washington
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Netanyahu was likely to meet senior U.S. officials, including Clinton, when he visits Washington early next week to speak at an annual conference run by the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobby group.
The U.S.-Israeli dispute and the efforts to calm it were sure to come up at a meeting in Moscow on Friday of the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators, which includes the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.
In the Gaza strike, Israeli war planes hit at least four targets, Hamas security officials and witnesses said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries in any of the strikes, whose targets included a smuggling tunnel along the border with Egypt, two open areas in Khan Younis and a metal foundry near Gaza City.
Palestinian militants in Gaza have carried out sporadic rocket and mortar bomb attacks on Israel since the end of a three-week Gaza war in January 2009.
