Infolive.tv - Israel News - Senior U.S. diplomats have returned to the Middle East for an unannounced visit to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that collapsed last year and now face new challenges. Dennis Ross and David Hale's visit, is their first to the region since special Mideast envoy George Mitchell resigned last month after failing to break the negotiations deadlock. The first big challenge for the U.S. envoys is to find a formula for talks that would entice the Palestinians to drop their bid for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. Peace talks launched in September after a two-year breakdown collapsed just three weeks later after an Israeli moratorium on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank expired. Since then, the Palestinians have forged ahead with plans to seek U.N. recognition for a state with or without a peace deal with Israel. That effort faces major obstacles, not least because the United States, which opposes it, has veto power on the Security Council.
