JERUSALEM — With help from an Egyptian cease-fire proposal for the Gaza Strip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice persuaded the U.S.-backed Palestinian leadership Wednesday to resume peace talks with Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had halted the negotiations Sunday over an Israeli incursion into Gaza and had rebuffed Rice's entreaties Tuesday to change his mind. But after speaking to Abbas by telephone Wednesday, Rice announced here that the peace talks were back on track.
Abbas later confirmed the reversal in a statement from his West Bank headquarters. He said his moderate Palestinian faction remained committed to the "strategic choice" of negotiations as a means for achieving an independent state alongside Israel.
"We have the intention of resuming the peace process," he said, without giving a date for the next round of talks.
President Bush, who helped launch the peace talks at a November conference in Annapolis, Md., is pushing for agreement by the end of his term on the main issues of a final settlement: borders, the status of Palestinian refugees and conflicting claims to Jerusalem.
But the effort is threatened by violence in Gaza, where the ruling Hamas faction calls for Israel's destruction and opposes the talks.
Israel said its five-day assault on Gaza, which ended early Monday, was aimed at stopping a growing barrage of rocket fire at its border communities. Palestinian outrage over the death toll in Gaza, which exceeded 100 and included many civilians, prompted Abbas to suspend the talks.
Rice had planned her two-day visit to Egypt, the West Bank and Israel before the incursion, hoping to advance the talks. Instead she struggled to rescue them from collapse.
"Hamas, which in effect holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands, is now trying to make the path to a Palestinian state hostage to them," Rice said during a news conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. "And we cannot permit that to happen."
Abbas' spokesman, Nabil abu Rudaineh, said two assurances from Rice swayed the Palestinian leader to drop his condition that a truce take hold in Gaza before talks resumed.
Rice said she was sending David Welch, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, back to Cairo for discussions about Gaza, the topic of her talks with Egyptian officials Tuesday.
