Region

BAGHDAD — Arrest warrants have been issued for the judge who convicted Saddam Hussein and a journalist critical of the government for allegedly libelling Iraq’s premier, a watchdog and the judge said Sunday.

Warrants were issued last month for Munir Haddad and Sarmad Al Taie, apparently for criticising Nouri Al Maliki, under an article of the criminal code that prohibits defaming or insulting government employees.

A local press watchdog said the warrant for Taie, who writes a regular column for the Al Mada newspaper and is a frequent guest on television current affairs programmes, was the first against a journalist since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Maliki’s spokesman declined to confirm the premier’s office had filed the case.

Haddad, who sentenced Saddam to death in 2006 and is now a private lawyer, turned himself in last week after being told of the warrant. He was subsequently released on bail.

“The person who filed a case against me was Maliki, accusing me of libel,” Haddad said, telling AFP the original warrant was issued on January 8.

“I did not attack him, I was just practising my freedom of expression by criticising the government’s performance... I am not against the prime minister, I am not his competitor, I do not have any political allegiance, I do not want to replace him, and I do not want to be in the government.”

Haddad gave no details on the specific comments he made to trigger the accusation, and did not say when he would next appear in court.

Another warrant was issued for Taie, according to Ziad Al Ajili, head of the Baghdad-based Journalism Freedom Observatory.

“The government has filed a legal case against Sarmad Al Taie because of the opinions he expressed on television,” Ajili told AFP, adding the warrant was apparently the first issued against a reporter since Saddam’s overthrow.

“This is far away from international standards of freedom of opinion and expression.”

Maliki’s spokesman Ali Mussawi declined to say whether or not the premier had initiated the legal case, but said: “Maliki is like any citizen. He goes to the courts to defend his rights. What is the problem?”

“This is a boost for the judiciary. Everybody, even the prime minister, is subject to the law.”

ABU DHABI — The UAE summoned the Qatari ambassador on Sunday to protest against remarks made by a Muslim Brotherhood-linked cleric who slammed the Emirates for jailing Islamists, the foreign ministry said.

The summons was the first of its kind by a member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — against another GCC state since the bloc’s formation in 1981.

Qatar’s ambassador to the UAE, Fares Al Nuaimi, was summoned to the foreign ministry in Abu Dhabi and handed “an official letter of protest” over “insults” by cleric Yusef Al Qaradawi, WAM news agency reported.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born Muslim scholar, wields huge influence through his regular appearances on Al Jazeera television from his base in exile in Qatar, where he has lived for decades.

He is a staunch backer of Egypt’s deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, unlike the UAE which supports the interim government installed in Cairo by the military that overthrew Morsi last July 3.

In a weekly Friday prayers sermon in Doha last month, Qaradawi lashed out at the UAE, accusing it of “standing against Islamist regimes, punishing its leaders and putting them in jail”.

His comments came just days after the UAE jailed a group of 30 Emiratis and Egyptians to terms ranging from three months to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell.

The Brotherhood is banned in much of the region, and the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars in aid to Egypt after the overthrow of Morsi, who hails from the Islamist organisation.

Qatar, however, has backed the Brotherhood in several countries swept by the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, and has criticised Cairo for banning the group and launching a deadly crackdown against it.

On Saturday, Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled Al Attiyah disavowed Qaradawi’s remarks, saying “they do not reflect Qatari foreign policy” and insisting that ties between the two nations are “strategic in all aspects”.

But the UAE foreign ministry said that response “did not reflect a decisive stance rejecting Qaradawi’s speech”, and therefore Abu Dhabi had to take “an unprecedented measure” and summon Doha’s envoy.

JUBA — South Sudanese rebels accused government forces on Sunday of razing the hometown of their leader Riek Machar, violating a ceasefire and said the army was drawing support from foreign fighters now in the country.

Rebel spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said government SPLA forces and fighters from the Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement — a rebel group from north of the border — had destroyed the northern town of Leer on Saturday, massacring women and children as they fled.

An army spokesman said he had not received any reports of fighting in Leer, where the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said last week more than 200 of its staff had been forced to flee because of growing insecurity.

The government accuses the rebels of flouting the ceasefire signed on January 23.

The claims and counter-claims came as east African ceasefire monitors began to arrive in South Sudan, seven weeks after violence erupted in the capital, Juba, before spreading across the world’s newest state.

“[President Salva] Kiir’s forces burned down the whole of Leer town and entire surrounding villages,” Koang said in a statement.

“The latest destruction of Leer town in Unity state has no strategic, operational or tactical importance, but mere need for psychological satisfaction.”

Koang said the Ugandan military, which gave air and ground support to the SPLA as it battled to recapture rebel-held towns before the ceasefire, had swollen its ranks with fighters from the defeated M23 Congolese rebel group.

Hundreds of M23 rebels fled into Uganda after the Congolese army and a UN brigade flushed them from their strongholds. SPLA spokesman Philip Aguer said he had received no reports of foreign militiamen joining the conflict.

Ugandan army spokesman Colonel Paddy Ankunda called the rebel allegations “cheap lies”.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than 800,000 have fled their homes since fighting was triggered by a power struggle between President Kiir and Machar, his former deputy whom he sacked in July.

The conflict, which has taken on a largely ethnic dimension between the Dinka and Nuer tribes of Kiir and Machar respectively, has brought oil-producing South Sudan, a country the size of France, to the brink of civil war.

Machar on Friday accused Kiir of sabotaging the peace talks — which resume in neighbouring Ethiopia this week — and of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing, in a Reuters interview at his bush hideout in remote Jonglei state.

An advance team of monitors sent by east African nations arrived in Juba on Sunday to start observing the shaky truce.

Diplomats expect them to focus on the three flashpoint towns of Malakal and Bentiu, near the main oilfields, and Bor, where some of the heaviest clashes have occurred, as well as the capital.

“We will start our mission, at least the teams will be deployed, within the next week,” General Gebreegzabher Mebrahtu, a retired Ethiopian general who is leading the advance team, told reporters in Juba.

The violence, the worst since South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011, has caused a humanitarian crisis.

At least 3.2 million people — more than a quarter of the population — face food shortages, the United Nations says. Aid agencies say insecurity is hampering their operations.

SANAA — Armed Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped a German citizen in the capital Sanaa, foreign ministry officials said Sunday.

Foreign ministry officials said the German was in the country studying Arabic. They said that after he was seized Friday, his kidnappers took him to Marib province east of Sanaa.

A security official said that the kidnappers are demanding the release of two members of a tribe in Marib, who were arrested in a military hospital in Sanaa four months ago.

A Yemeni government spokesman said efforts were under way to release the hostages.

“A crackdown is taking place now at the locations of the kidnappers in order to release the German hostage,” Rajeh Badi said. 

The other officials spoke anonymously as they were not allowed to talk to the media.

Abductions are frequent in Yemen, an impoverished nation where armed tribesmen and Al Qaeda-linked militants take hostages in an effort to swap them for prisoners or cash.

TRIPOLI, Libya — A Libyan security official says that over 54 detainees have escaped from a prison in the capital Tripoli due to a security failure.

Judicial Police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abu Kara said in a Sunday statement that the escapees smashed the building’s rear protective windows, while guards were distributing the inmates’ breakfast. He said the prison was short five guards at the time of the Saturday breakout.

Abu Kara says jails overseen by the judicial police have been plagued by repeated prison breaks. In July, over 1,000 detainees escaped from Al Kweifiya prison near the eastern city Benghazi.

Libya has experienced a security vacuum since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. In the absence of a strong police and military, the government relies on militias that include many anti-Qadhafi rebels.

CAIRO — Egypt said Sunday that verdicts handed down by military courts, which under the new constitution are allowed to try civilians, can now be appealed.

The provision allowing civilians to be judged by the military has faced stiff opposition from rights activists.

Thousands of cases involving civilians have been referred to military courts since the early 2011 uprising that toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak.

More than 12,000 cases were referred to military courts that year alone when a military junta assumed power after the fall of Mubarak, according to campaign group No To Military Trials For Civilians.

On Sunday, interim President Adly Mansour ordered the creation of a higher court to hear appeals against verdicts delivered by military tribunals, a statement from his office said.

The new constitution adopted in January stipulates that civilians can face military trials in cases involving direct attacks on military personnel or military installations.

But rights groups say this could violate a defendant’s right to an impartial trial.

Dozens of supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi have also been referred to military trials since he was deposed by the army in July.

Military tribunals have also passed verdicts in recent months against three Egyptian journalists.

In November, journalist Mohammad Sabry was given a six-month suspended sentence for photographing army checkpoints in the restive Sinai Peninsula near the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

A month earlier, Ahmed Abu Derra was handed down a similar sentence for reporting without authorisation in a military zone, also in Sinai.

Also in October, a Cairo military court sentenced another journalist, Hatem Abul Nour, to a year in jail for impersonating an army officer over the phone.

CAIRO — A jihadist group behind a wave of spectacular attacks is a grave threat to Egypt’s stability as political turmoil triggered by the Islamist president’s ouster rocks the country, analysts say.

In less than a fortnight, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks.

These include a car bombing at police headquarters in Cairo, shooting down a military helicopter with a missile and assassinating a police general in broad daylight in the capital.

“Vengeance is coming,” the Sinai-based group warned army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who is expected to stand for the presidency after he ousted Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

The group’s attacks have “made Egyptian authorities look like they were chasing ghosts”, said David Barnett, research associate at US-based think tank the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

“It is the main militant group that has the potential to escalate the destabilisation in the country.”

Analysts say Ansar Beit Al Maqdis is inspired by Al Qaeda.

But Egyptian security officials claim the “terrorist group is derived” from Morsi’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood which won all elections after the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis is thought to have been founded primarily by Egyptians in 2011 after the anti-Mubarak revolt, with most of its fighters drawn from Sinai tribes.

In recent months the group has also seen support coming from the Nile Delta and some areas of Cairo, experts say.

Although its overall command structure and source of funding are major unknowns, two of its known leaders are Shadi Al Menei, who has eluded arrest so far and is from Sinai’s Sawarka tribe, and Abu Osama Al Masry, of whom little is known.

The group is also believed to be led or backed by militants who broke out of prison in 2011 during the anti-Mubarak revolt.

“Its links with Al Qaeda are tenuous at best,” said Barnett. The group’s videos often feature clips of Al Qaeda’s Egypt-born leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.

The group’s “early goal was to attack Israel and prevent co-operation between Egypt and Israel by sabotaging gas pipelines”, said France-based Matthieu Guidere, an expert on Islamist militants.

Interior minister targeted

On Friday its fighters fired a rocket at Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat, the group said in a statement.

“On July 3 [the day Morsi was removed] the group issued a fatwa declaring the Egyptian army as infidels. From there, it turned from an anti-Israeli jihadist group to one focusing against the Egyptian security forces,” Guidere said.

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis also claimed a September 5 car bomb attack in Cairo targeting interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim, who escaped unhurt.

Its deadliest assault was a December 24 suicide car bomb that ripped through a police building north of Cairo, killing 15 people.

On January 25, as Egyptians marked the third anniversary of the start of the anti-Mubarak revolt, the group claimed it downed a military helicopter in Sinai with a missile, killing five soldiers.

“The level of sophistication is beyond what observers thought they were capable of,” Barnett said of the group’s ability to stage assaults outside the Sinai.

“The attacks suggest there are well experienced fighters in the group. Some of them have significant experience in fighting.”

Sinai-based researcher Ismail Alexandrani said Ansar Beit Al Maqdis had procured weapons from Libya and Sudan after the fall of Mubarak.

“We can also say that some jihadists who previously fought in Afghanistan, Syria and Bosnia have joined the group,” he added.

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis believes in gaining power through violence, analysts believe.

“The overthrow of Morsi’s government is a prime indication for their argument that the way to success is through violence and not through democratic process,” said Barnett.

The Muslim Brotherhood says that it renounced violence decades ago.

Morsi’s overthrow has polarised Egypt, with Amnesty International saying that 1,400 people have been killed in political violence since last July.

Deputy Interior Minister Shafiq Saeed said the authorities “have arrested members from the group who have confessed that [Ansar Beit Al Maqdis] belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood”, and denied that jihadist attacks had risen.

“The government is so entrenched in the battle against the Brotherhood that they appear to be losing the sight of the actual battle around them,” said Barnett.

“The reality is that there is real danger from the jihadi group capable of carrying out attacks.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — In the 1920s, an urgent call went out to the literati across the Middle East from Arab leaders in Jerusalem: Send us your books so that we may protect them for generations to come. 

Jerusalem was soon flushed with writings of all kinds, to be stored and preserved at the newly minted Al Aqsa Mosque library.

But many of those centuries-old manuscripts are in a state of decay. Now, religious authorities are restoring and digitising the books, many of them written by hand. They hope to make them available online to scholars and researchers across the Arab world who are unable to travel to Jerusalem.

Hamed Abu Teir, the library’s manager, called the manuscripts a “treasure and trust”. ‘’We should preserve them”, he said.

Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, is located on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount. The holy site is ground zero in the territorial and religious conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

The library and its 130,000 books are housed in two separate rooms in the compound, where modern steel bookshelves are affixed to ancient stonewalls.Among the collection are some 4,000 manuscripts, mainly donations from the private collections of Jerusalem families. UNESCO, which is providing assistance for the restoration project, says the library contains “one of the world’s most important collections of Islamic manuscripts”.

The drive to restore the manuscripts and get them online is part of a greater global trend that has seen an array of historical documents digitised and uploaded to increase access to researchers worldwide.

Here, the gap to be bridged isn’t just physical distance. Residents of countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel, including much of the Arab world, are unable to visit Jerusalem and Palestinians living in the nearby West Bank or the Gaza Strip need to secure a permit from Israel to enter the city. Officials hope to circumvent those hindrances by putting the manuscripts online.

“A student in the Arab and Muslim world can’t access it. A student in Algeria or Saudi Arabia for example can’t come here and access [the manuscripts]. We want to grant him the knowledge in his own house,” said Abu Teir.

Most of the manuscripts were donated in response to a call in the early 1920s from the Supreme Muslim Council, a religious governing body, said Walid Ahmad, an education professor at Israel’s Al Qasemi Academic College who has researched the library. He said the council sought to prevent Arabs from selling old manuscripts to foreign and Jewish buyers and preserve the Islamic heritage in one of its holiest sites.

The oldest book dates back 900 years, with some of the newer titles from the 19th century. Most of the texts are religious, but other subjects include geography, astronomy and medicine. Some of the pages contain personal letters about travel in the Middle East of the 18th century. Radwan Amro, who is leading the restoration process, said the most well-known manuscript in the collection was written by Imam Mohammed Al Ghazali, an Islamic scholar from the 12th century.

The manuscripts were stored in a library for the first few years of the 1920s, but when riots erupted in 1929 over disputes surrounding Jewish and Arab access to the sacred compound, the manuscripts were stored in bags and closets in a separate building nearby, Ahmad said. They would remain there for nearly half a century, when a new space was created for them.

But upon unpacking the books, officials realised they had been pillaged, with many snatched or destroyed.

About a quarter of the 4,000 manuscripts are considered in poor condition. Half of the books are already undergoing restoration, but the other half lie exposed in a small room in the library.

Many are in tatters. Shards of paper crumble off their pages. Insects have dug deep trenches into the unprotected leafs. Thousands of loose, fraying pages lie on a long table where an expert is attempting to match them to their original book.

The restoration and digitisation project, funded by the Waqf, Jordan’s Islamic authority which manages the holy site, aims to preserve what remains.

In the six years since the project began, Amro said the 10-person team has restored 200 manuscripts as well as old maps, Ottoman population and trade registers and hand-written documents from the Mamluk period of the 13th to 16th centuries. But the painstakingly slow process of treating every individual page to protect the intricate text and the paper’s delicate fibres means restorers have a long road ahead of them.

Amro would not give an estimate as to when the restoration would be complete, joking that it could take “hundreds of years”. But he said nearly all of the manuscript pages have been digitised and hopes that by the end of the year they will be put online.

Ahmad of Al Qasemi College said that in order to stay relevant in the Arab world from which it is physically disconnected, the library must put its collection online.

“Presenting materials to the greater public is the essence of an important library like Al Aqsa’s,” said Ahmad. “That’s how you stay on the map as a library.”

CAIRO — Deposed Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi was back in court Saturday as his trial over the killing of protesters resumed, with the defence insisting he is still the legitimate president.

His trial is seen as a test for Egypt’s military-installed authorities, who have come under fire for a heavy-handed crackdown on his Islamist supporters after he was forced out by the army last July.

An Islamist coalition backing Morsi called for nationwide protests on Saturday to “support the legitimate elected president”, but there were no reports of any demonstrations.

At Saturday’s hearing Morsi, dressed in a white prison uniform, was held in a glass cage separate from co-defendants, an AFP correspondent reported from the court.

Of the 14 co-defendants, seven were present, while the rest are being tried in absentia.

Some of the co-defendants turned their backs on the proceedings and gave a four-fingered “Rabaa” salute, after welcoming Morsi when he entered his cage.

The gesture refers to a massive pro-Morsi protest in Cairo’s Rabaa Al Adawiya Square that was violently dispersed in August, setting off clashes in which hundreds of people, mostly Islamists, were killed.

The third hearing of the trial — in which Morsi and his co-defendants are accused of inciting the killing of protesters in December 2012 outside the presidential palace — was being held at a heavily guarded police academy in Cairo.

“This court has no jurisdiction to look into the case because Morsi is still the president and no official decision was taken for his ouster,” said lawyer Salim Al Awa, a member of the defence team.

The judge declined a request by Morsi to speak at the proceedings.

Prosecutors showed video footage at Saturday’s hearing of what they said were “supporters of defendants” chanting pro-Morsi slogans, carrying sticks and dismantling protest tents outside the presidential palace in December 2012.

The footage also showed at least one alleged Muslim Brotherhood member firing a gun.

At that time, members of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Morsi belongs attacked opposition protesters camped outside the palace in protest at a decree by Morsi to grant himself extra-judicial powers.

At least seven people were killed in the clashes, and dozens of opposition protesters were detained and beaten by Morsi’s supporters.

The incident was a turning point in Morsi’s presidency, galvanising a disparate opposition that eventually organised the mass protests in June 2013 that led to his downfall.

Morsi’s defence says there is no proof he incited the clashes, and that most of those killed in the violence were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which moved in to protect the presidential palace after police withdrew.

The trial was adjourned to Tuesday.

The first hearing in trial of Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide Mohamed Badie and more than 50 others for inciting deadly violence in the Nile Delta city of Qaliub, shortly after Morsi’s ouster, was also briefly convened and adjourned to Monday. 

‘President of republic’ faces four trials 

Morsi is facing four separate trials, and at the first hearing of another trial on January 28 he defiantly insisted he was still the “president of the republic.”

In that trial, Morsi and 130 co-defendants face charges of breaking out of prison during the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule.

Morsi also faces trials on charges of espionage in collaboration with the Palestinian Hamas movement, and insulting the judiciary. The espionage trial will start on February 16, while no date has yet been set for the other trial.

Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood won a series of polls after Mubarak’s ouster and who became Egypt’s first freely elected leader in June 2012, was ousted a year later by the army after massive protests against him.

Amnesty International says that since Morsi’s overthrow on July 3 at least 1,400 people have been killed in clashes with security forces and his opponents.

Months of bloodshed has dimmed hopes for reconciliation in the Arab world’s most populous nation as it prepares for a presidential vote to be held by mid-April.

Egypt’s army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, whose popularity has skyrocketed since he ousted Morsi, is expected to seek the presidency.

The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation late last year, with any public show of support punishable by lengthy jail terms.

MUNICH/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday that he remains hopeful that the Obama administration’s effort to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians can succeed, Reuters news agency reported.

The United States hopes to complete a “framework” accord in coming weeks and will then try to negotiate a final peace deal by the end of 2014, a US official said last week, according to a participant in a briefing with American Jewish leaders.

“I am hopeful and we will keep working on it,” Kerry, who despite widespread scepticism is leading the US effort to push the two sides towards a deal, said during remarks at the Munich security conference.

“I believe in the possibility or I wouldn’t pursue this,” he said. “I don’t think we’re being quixotic ... We’re working hard because the consequences of failure are unacceptable.”

US envoy Martin Indyk said the framework would address core issues in the conflict, including borders, security, refugees and Jewish settlements, a participant in the briefing said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes pro-settler parties, has already shown signs of strain over talks on Palestinian statehood.

Jordan Valley  

The UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories Friday criticised Israel’s demolition of 36 homes in the Jordan Valley and urged a halt to such actions in the West Bank, according to Agence France-Presse.

Hundreds of activists, meanwhile, staged an overnight demonstration in the Jordan Valley region.

The moves came as fresh opinion poll evidence showed that faith in the Middle East peace process has largely evaporated among both Israelis and Palestinians.

The demolitions in the Jordan Valley community of Ain Al Hilweh on Thursday displaced 66 people, including 36 children, James Rawley said in a statement.

“I am deeply concerned about the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians... along the Jordan Valley where the number of structures demolished more than doubled in the last year,” he said.

“This activity not only deprives Palestinians of access to shelter and basic services, it also runs counter to international law.”

His office said more than 1,000 people had been displaced last year in the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem by demolitions on the grounds that homes had been built without Israeli permits, “which are virtually impossible to obtain”.

On Friday, around 300 Palestinians together with Israeli and foreign activists set up camp in abandoned houses near Jericho in the West Bank to protest against Israel’s refusal to pull out of the Jordan Valley in case of a peace deal, an AFP photographer said.

The demonstrators in Ain Hijleh village were equipped with generators and said they planned to spend the night in around a dozen of the houses, as Israeli troops and police kept watch from a distance.

They held a banner reading: “No peace with settlements.”

Their action — dubbed “Melh Al Ard” (salt of the earth) — aimed “to revive an old Palestinian Canaanite village in the Jordan Valley”, to counter any Israeli annexation plans, the activists said in a statement.

They condemned Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process brokered by Kerry.

His efforts would “establish a disfigured Palestinian state and recognises the Israeli entity as a Jewish state”, they said.

Such a state would put Arab Israelis at risk of deportation at any time, the activists said.

Faith in the Middle East peace process has largely evaporated among Israelis and Palestinians in the two decades since the Oslo accords and a famous White House lawn handshake, a new poll found Friday.

According to the Zogby Research Services poll, neither side has much confidence in the new push for peace being led by Kerry, which the pollsters believe is proving a hard sell.

Although two decades have elapsed since then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands watched by then US leader Bill Clinton, “it is clear several deep differences exist” plaguing the atmosphere between the two sides.

“Twenty years later only 18 per cent of Palestinians and 19 per cent of Israelis view Oslo as a positive development in the history of their relationship,” the poll said.

Both sides believe the other is not committed to peace.

And only around a third of people in each community sees a two-state solution as feasible, even though 74 per cent of Israelis and 47 per cent of Palestinians agree it is the desired outcome.

“From the results of this poll, it is clear that the past 20 years have taken a toll on the confidence both Palestinians and Israelis have in the peace process that began with the 1993 signing of the Oslo accords,” the poll said.

Kerry is trying to draw up a framework agreement which would set out the end game in the resumed negotiations and guide the talks going forward over the next few months.

Twenty years ago both Palestinians, some 61 per cent, and Israelis, some 54 per cent, said they “were hopeful” when the Oslo accords were signed, setting out a roadmap for the peace process.

The poll was carried out in the Middle East in August 2013 among 1,000 Israelis and Palestinians, just as Kerry persuaded the two sides to resume talks after a three-year hiatus.