"... The U.S. is proposing that Israel extend a partial West Bank settlement freeze for 60 days.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has returned to Israel after more than a week in the United States with a package of U.S. ideas that include extending the freeze that expired over the weekend by 60 days, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Makovsky told POLITICO. ... Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in Paris Monday that he would refrain from issuing an announcement on whether he would stay or leave Israeli-Palestinian direct talks until an Oct. 4 meeting of the Arab League.
That gives U.S. negotiators a week to try to salvage the talks. In addition to proposing a 60 day settlement freeze extension, the new U.S. package puts forward some assurances to Israel on security issues, Makovsky said. Earlier Monday, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer said he was not optimistic that the immediate crisis had but been postponed.
"All [Abbas] has done is defer the issue for a few days, while he consults” with various foreign leaders and advisors, Kurtzer said. “Maybe they will come up with some magical formula. ….But I don’t know if the problem is solved so much as the fight has been deferred” for a few more days. “If the building that is taking place ... in fact gets confined to [major settlement] blocks, maybe this one will go away,” Kurtzer continued. “But it doesn’t look that way. The celebrations last night were in out of the way settlements.”..."
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