Middle East Peace

Vice President Joe Biden called on Israeli officials Tuesday to work harder for creation of a Palestinian state and to halt growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Biden, speaking at a conference sponsored by an influential pro-Israel lobby, said the Obama administration was committed to a new direction in Middle East peace efforts because "the status quo of the last decade has not served the interests of the United States, or Israel, very well."

Israelis put aside their many divisions Tuesday to remember more than 22,000 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of Palestinian attacks, mournfully aware that the strife that led to those deaths is far from over. In an annual ritual marking Memorial Day, air raid sirens sounded at midmorning, traffic halted and people stood silently at attention for two minutes. Israeli leaders gathered at the national cemetery for a memorial service for soldiers.

Declaring a need to defeat growing cynicism about the prospects for Mideast peace, President Obama has invited the leaders of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian territories to the White House for separate talks over the next six weeks. Obama said he wants to see Israelis, Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries take their first steps toward progress within months.

Avigdor Lieberman, whose ultranationalist rhetoric has raised alarm among Arabs and international concern, took a major step Monday toward becoming foreign minister in Israel's next government. His appointment, part of a pact between his right-wing party and that of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, is not final. The deal leaves an opening for the current foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, to stay in that post if her centrist Kadima party agrees to join the coalition.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an unusual public criticism of Israel, said Wednesday that its plan to destroy dozens of Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem was "unhelpful" and contrary to Israel's obligations under a U.S.-backed peace plan. Clinton, closing her first foray into Middle East peacemaking, said the implications of the decision to raze the homes for an archaeological project "go far beyond" the 88 homes affected by Israel's plans.

Veteran Mideast peace negotiator Dennis B. Ross, who was widely expected to be named special envoy to Iran, has been given a less ambitious mission as the Obama administration continues to weigh how best to deal with the Islamic Republic. President Obama named prominent negotiators to represent the administration in the Middle East and South Asia, and Ross was expected to be given a corresponding assignment for Iran.

The tunnel owners sit around the fire, passing cups of sweet tea and talking bitterly about the siege. But on this early February morning they're not talking about the Israeli jets and their occasional airstrikes on the hundreds of tunnels that worm their way from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, slipping in supplies and, some say, weapons.

Less than a week before Israeli voters pick a new leader, the candidate most involved in negotiations with the Palestinians is on the defensive over newly reported details of an interim peace accord offered months ago by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

George J. Mitchell, the new U.S. envoy to the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Wednesday to begin testing his axiom that there's no such thing as a conflict that cannot be ended. Yet even as Israeli and Palestinian leaders offered ideas on how the Obama administration can help bring about peace, the prevailing mood on both sides was that their decades-old fight had become almost hopelessly deadlocked.

President Obama dispatched his special Middle East envoy on his inaugural peacemaking trip Monday, declaring that former Sen. George J. Mitchell would speak for the White House in a search for "progress, not just photo ops." Obama's public appearance with Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was his second in five days and placed a strong emphasis on the peacemaking efforts, which come when many analysts rate the chances for Arab-Israeli peace as the worst in decades.