Kerry to visit Israel next week for peace efforts

JERUSALEM, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Israel to meet with Israeli and Palestinian officials next week, a source from the U.S. embassy told Xinhua Friday.

Kerry had been expected to pay his sixth visit to the region over the past four months this weekend, but postponed the trip due to his wife's illness.

Two weeks ago, Kerry conducted a shuttle-diplomacy visit to the region, in which he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly over the course of three days.

The top U.S. diplomat planned to announce a quadruple summit to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which have experienced a deadlock since 2010 over Israel's settlement activities in the West Bank.

Wrapping up his last visit, Kerry said there had been some " breakthrough" in efforts to resume peace talks on both sides but did not declare a summit, which is to be held in Amman, with the participation of U.S. and Jordanian officials.

An Israeli diplomatic source told Xinhua last week that the sides are "closer to restarting peace talks" than it appears, citing that "Kerry has done some major work here."

Kerry's recent plan to resume peace talks includes a freeze in the Israeli settlements' construction, on the lands that Israel annexed in the 1967 Mideast War, in addition to the release of 103 Palestinian prisoners within six-month time, the London-based Al- Hayat newspaper reported.

However, the gap still persists on the question of the identity of the prisoners to be released and the announcement on the settlements freeze, according to several reports in local media.

During a conference held by the "Geneva Initiative" peace organization Monday, former Palestinian minister of prisoners' affairs Ashraf al-Ajarmi said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had direct talks with Palestinian officials. "We conducted direct talks with Netanyahu at his house in recent time, along with the indirect talks mediated by the United States."

"We are still waiting to hear whether he accepts the principle of the two-state solution, on the basis of the 1967 borderlines," al-Ajarmi said.

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