The United States said that its Middle East peace envoy would head back to the region next week in the latest bid to restart long-stalled talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
US special envoy David Hale and other representatives of the so-called Quartet on Middle East peace will meet separately Tuesday with Israeli and Palestinian officials, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Hale will afterward travel to Cairo and Paris for further consultations.
The trip is part of "our effort to get the two parties to put forward concrete proposals and to agree to come back to the table together," Nuland said.
The Quartet -- composed of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia -- laid out a proposal in September aimed at reaching a peace agreement in a year.
But since then there has been no visible sign of progress.
At a press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said both the US and the Quartet expect Israel and the Palestinians to meet in direct negotiations and exchange comprehensive proposals on issues of security and territory;
According to The Jerusalem Post, his comments are significant because the Palestinians have said in recent days that while they have presented the Quartet with comprehensive proposals, Israel has refused to do so, creating the impression that Israel is obstructing the process.
Israel’s position is that the comprehensive proposals that the Quartet discussed in September when it drew up a new framework for trying to bring the sides back to the table are to come out of negotiations between the sides, and not as result of the Quartet mediating between them. Shapiro’s comments appear to support Israel’s interpretation.