US Middle east envoy George Mitchell, who is on a visit to Israel, will meet Israeli officials in Tel Aviv over Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
George Mitchell, on his first visit to Israel since Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office late last month, arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and met Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
He is due to meet ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu and other top officials on Thursday.
Israel and the United States "can and need" to "coordinate and reach understandings" on all the issues on the regional agenda, Ehud Barak told George Mitchell during the meeting.
Mitchell arrived from North Africa, where he said in Morocco that "In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we believe that the two-state solution, two states living side by side in peace, is the best and the only way to resolve this conflict."
The US insists on setting up an independent Palestinian state, while the right-leaning government of Netanyahu refuses to commit itself to create the Palestinian state or to halt Jewish settlement activities -- both regarded as priorities for the new US administration.
Mitchell will hold talks with Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday.
On April 1, Lieberman said that Tel Aviv was not bound by the 2007 US-backed Annapolis deal, under which Israel agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state. He said the peace process was at a "dead end."
Following the comments by Lieberman, former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni who was the country's top negotiator in peace talks with Palestinians, said that her successor's position on the 2007 Annapolis deal "showed the world that we are not a partner [for peace]."
At the US-hosted Annapolis Conference, Israel pledged to halt all settlement activities in East al-Quds and the West Bank. East al-Quds is widely viewed as the capital of Palestine's future state.
Israel has in recent months announced the construction of hundreds of new Jewish homes in al-Quds, in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
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