Holy Land hostilities as peace talks get under way

Gaza militants opposed to peace with Israel have threatened to derail the negotiations. The Israeli armed forces said eight mortar bombs and one rocket hit Israel by mid-afternoon on the day of the talks – the highest daily total since March 2009. There were no injuries.

Israeli warplanes responded by bombing a smuggling tunnel along the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas officials said one person was killed and four wounded.

In Jerusalem, little more than an hour’s drive from Gaza, Mrs Clinton said Israeli and Palestinian leaders were “getting down to business” on the major issues dividing them, although there was no sign they were any closer to resolving a looming crisis over Israeli West Bank settlements.

The American secretary of state was in Jerusalem for a second day of talks aimed in part at ending the impasse, a day after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a summit hosted by Egypt.

“They are getting down to business and they have begun to grapple with the core issues that can only be resolved through face-to-face negotiations,” Mrs Clinton told reporters. “I believe they are serious about reaching an agreement that results in two states living side by side in peace and security.”

Mr Abbas has threatened to walk out of the talks if Israel resumes construction in the settlements after a 10-month slowdown expires at the end of the month. Mrs Clinton and US President Barack Obama have called on Mr Netanyahu to extend the slowdown.

The Israeli leader has signalled he is looking for a compromise. Earlier this week, he said the current curbs would not remain in place after the end of this month, although he will continue to restrict building activity to some extent.

The Palestinians oppose the settlements because they eat up land they want for their future state. Some 300,000 Israelis live scattered among the West Bank’s 2.5 million Palestinians. An additional 200,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, the section of the city the Palestinians claim as their capital.

Mr Obama has made his pursuit of a Middle East settlement a centrepiece of his foreign policy. He hopes to forge a deal within a year.

Negotiators will have to tackle a series of issues that have undermined talks in the past: the location of the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the competing claims to the holy city of Jerusalem.

But they will have a hard time addressing those disputes if they cannot resolve the disagreement on the settlement slowdown.

Under intense international pressure, Mr Netanyahu declared curbs on West Bank settlement construction last November, seeking to draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. At the time the Palestinians dismissed the move as insignificant, an irony Mrs Clinton pointed out ahead of Tuesday’s talks in Egypt.

“Now we’re told that negotiations cannot continue unless something that was viewed as being inadequate continues,” she said.

The slowdown is set to expire on September 26, and Mr Netanyahu is being pressed by many of his religious and nationalist allies in Israel’s coalition government to resume construction.

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Abbas share a common enemy: Hamas. The Islamic group took over Gaza in 2007 after pushing out Mr Abbas’s forces, and it has threatened new violence as the peace talks move forward.