CAIRO: Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on Thursday that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should be given "a chance" despite suspicions about their results.
"We are following the course of the direct negotiations launched under the auspices of the United States at the beginning of this month in an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust," Moussa told a meeting of Arab foreign ministers.
"Given that the essence of Israeli policies remains unchanged, and despite the doubts of some about the goals of these negotiations, we take the sage position of giving it a chance," he said.
Moussa said developments will emerge before the end of the month, when a partial Israeli moratorium on settlement construction in occupied Palestinian lands expires.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s government says any further settlement building would end the talks.
Moussa’s comments came after a Palestinian official said deep divisions over settlements remained despite direct talks in Washington, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt and Jerusalem.
Israel and the Palestinians remain deeply divided on the renewal of settlement construction despite fresh peace talks.
Some 500,000 Israelis live in more than 120 Jewish settlements across the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories expected to form the bulk of a future Palestinian state.
The conflict over settlements has been one of the core disputes in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks going back to the early 1990s.
