By Xinhua
Jerusalem : U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel from Egypt on Tuesday in a bid to help resuming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which were suspended in protest against an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Rice will head directly for Ramallah for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. She will later dine in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert.
“There has to be an active peace process that can withstand the efforts of rejectionists to keep peace from being made, the people who are firing rockets do not want peace,” Rice told reporters after holding talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo.
“Negotiations ought to resume as soon as possible,” she was quoted by the online report of local daily Ha’aretz as saying.
Any lengthy suspension of talks hand victory to Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June and whose stepped-up rocket attacks into Israel preceded the latest Israeli offensive, she added.
In her talks with Israeli leaders, Rice is expected to raise the issue of Egypt’s request to increase the number of its soldiers on the border by 750, according to Ha’aretz.
Rice is also expected to seek Israel’s response to the plan to reopen the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, and to Fayyad’s plan to transfer control of the crossings between Gaza and Israel to the Palestinian National Authority.
The Israeli army had recently carried out a large-scale military ground operation into the Gaza Strip, which prompted Abbas to suspend peace talks with Israel.