CERNOBBIO (Italy): The Arab League’s Secretary General Amr Musa said on Friday negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians should be given a chance, but wondered whether Israel was ready for “real peace.”

“We see the negotiations start, let us give them a chance,” Mussa said at the Forum Ambrosetti, an annual political and economic summit in Cernobbio, on the Lake of Como in Northern Italy.

“I don’t want to be pessimistic on the first day of negotiations,” he added.

“Let us see what kind of compromise (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu is offering, we have never heard from the Israeli side any initiative or any concrete position,” Musa said.

Musa wondered whether Israel was ready to accept “a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”

US President Barack “Obama can, he said it, this is his motto, ‘yes we can’ and this has to cover the Arab-Israeli conflict too,” Musa said.

Bimonthly talks

Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have vowed to meet twice a month in a bid to hammer out an accord, after on Thursday launching the first direct negotiations in 20 months a meeting in Washington.

Observers across the Middle East expressed deep pessimism pierced with glimmers of hope on Friday after the talks.

Israeli and Arab columnists described Thursday’s fanfare as political theatre, while doubting the ability of present leaders to reach an historic breakthrough.

Palestinians expressed little optimism about the talks, noting that Abbas had failed in his efforts to secure an Israeli settlement freeze or clear terms of reference.

“Israel sees that there is an ‘opportunity’ - 10 years after Camp David - to impose a solution on the Palestinians that they have previously rejected,” Mohammed Yaghi wrote in the Al Ayyam newspaper.

He went on to say that Israel’s real goal was to “remove the Palestinian issue from the international and regional agenda.”

The Al Quds newspaper called for Palestinian unity and criticised the Hamas attacks, which it said “would have a negative impact on the talks, which the US administration is exerting great effort to see succeed.”

The Saudi daily Al Watan said Thursday’s ceremony was primarily aimed at shoring up domestic support for Obama’s Democratic Party ahead of mid-term elections in November, saying that US engagement would diminish afterwards.

To succeed, the talks would need “a moderate Israeli government with a genuine desire for peace, a strong and united Palestinian leadership and an American administration ready to put pressure on Israel,” the paper said.

“We’re going to have to wait a long time for that.” The Beirut daily Al Anwar echoed the Israeli press, saying “Hollywood-style ceremonies are no guarantee that the strategic obstacles to compromise can be overcome.”