By Lachlan Carmichael

WASHINGTON, Sep 03, 2010 (AFP) - Israel and the Palestinians on Thursday got off to a good start with their first direct negotiations in 20 months, but the gulf between the two sides remains wide, analysts said.

After a year and a half of US diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met this week in Washington to revive talks that stalled in bloodshed in December 2008.

"The first day has gone better than the administration could have expected," said Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel who now teaches at Princeton University.

Among the good signs is the "fact that this whole opening withstood the terrorism that occurred on the West Bank," Kurtzer said, referring to two Palestinian attacks that killed four Israeli settlers and wounded two others.

"It might not have" withstood the test, he told AFP.

He also saw what he believed may be more conciliatory language by Netanyahu on Israel as a Jewish state and by Abbas on security.

The Palestinian leader stressed cooperation with Israel on security.

The Israeli premier said: "Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."

For Kurtzer, the formulation may provide a "small opening," but said he needed to study it further.

"I think there is a difference between calling Israel a Jewish state and calling it a nation state of the Jewish people," Kurtzer said.

The Palestinians are reluctant to recognize Israel as a Jewish state for fear it could undermine the right-of-return claims of Palestinian refugees who left or fled Israel when it was created in 1948.

Kurtzer also welcomed the fact that Netanyahu and Abbas met each other privately for around 90 minutes.

"I'm not sure they did any negotiating. But they probably described what their priorities are and some of the constraints that they face and some of the things that bother them the most about the other," the former ambassador said.

"You get that off your chest at the beginning and then two weeks from now, you can sit down and say all right let's get down to business," he said.

The two leaders agreed Thursday to hold their second round of talks in the Middle East on September 14-15, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US envoy George Mitchell joining them again.

Kurtzer, who says a US presence is key to bridging gaps between the parties, said it was a good thing Clinton was going.

Nathan Brown, an analyst at The George Washington University, hesitated to welcome the announcement by US officials that Israel and the Palestinians would meet every two weeks.

"It is clear that if you want to make serious progress, you absolutely have to have the leaders involved," Brown told AFP.

"But I think most people on both sides think that Netanyahu has an interest in negotiations, simply to keep good relations with the Americans, but has no real interest in an agreement," he said.

"If that's the case, those periodic meetings of the leaders will benefit Netanyahu without providing Abbas any political reward," Brown said.

Brown praised the administration for the way it organized the negotiations.

"The one positive development that I would see is the presence of Egyptian and Jordanian leaders," he said, referring to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan attending White House gatherings on Wednesday.

"It means that the Obama administration does a better job than any of its predecessors in putting this in regional context and trying to align things regionally in order to produce results," Brown said.

"It is something Bush tried only in a symbolic way," he said, referring to the previous administration of George W. Bush.

Egypt and Jordan are key Arab mediators as the only Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Elliot Abrams, who worked on the Annapolis peace process under Bush, saw a positive start to the talks.

"I think the atmospherics are good, but all we had in Washington is atmospherics," said the analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The negotiations havent' begun seriously and they won't begin until the Israelis and Palestinians get alone in a room," he said.

"Both Abbas and Netanyahu are serious but I don't see how they're going to get to a deal, he said.

"I think the old line still holds. The most that any Israeli government is likely to offer is less than what any Palestinian government can accept," he said.

He said the goal of settling the core issues in one year is "impossible."

The core issues are Israel's security, borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital.

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Copyright AFP 2010.