US President Barack Obama said today that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's attendance at the funeral for Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres was a reminder of the "unfinished business of peace" in the Middle East.
In a 20-minute eulogy in honour of the former Israeli president and prime minister, who died on Wednesday aged 93, Obama said Peres had always strived for a resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict that treated both sides equally.
"Even in the face of terrorist attacks, even after repeated disappointments at the negotiation table, he insisted that as human beings, Palestinians must be seen as equal in dignity to Jews and must therefore be equal in self-determination," he said.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook hands and exchanged brief words at the funeral.
"Long time, long time," Abbas told Netanyahu and the prime minister's wife Sara, after shaking his hand before the start of the state ceremony.
Welcoming Abbas, as participants recorded the encounter on their cellphones, Netanyahu said of his attendance: "It's something that I appreciate very much on behalf of our people and on behalf of us."
But Abbas's rare visit to the city, a short drive through Israeli military checkpoints from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, seemed unlikely to yield anything more than handshakes.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been frozen since 2014 and Netanyahu and Abbas, deeply divided over Jewish settlement on land Palestinians seek for a state and other issues, have not held face-to-face talks since 2010.
Abbas was given a front-row seat between European Council President Donald Tusk and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Obama briefly greeted the Palestinian leader with a kiss on each cheek before walking down the line to stand next to Netanyahu.
Obama and Netanyahu were to deliver eulogies at the cemetery, which overlooks the Jerusalem forest and a verdant valley, in what could be an opportunity for the president to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to revive peacemaking.
US officials have held open the possibility of Obama making another formal effort to get peace negotiations back on the agenda before he leaves office in January, possibly via a UN Security Council resolution.
With time short between the end of the funeral and the start of the Jewish sabbath at sundown, no plans were announced for any diplomacy on Friday. Obama and Netanyahu, who have had a testy relationship, last held talks on September 21 in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Britain's Prince Charles, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former British Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair were also on a long list of foreign dignitaries attending the funeral.
Peres will be buried in a Jewish religious ceremony, in a plot between two former prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin was assassinated by an ultranationalist Israeli in 1995 over the interim peace deals that he and Peres reached with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"A light has gone out," Obama said in a statement after Peres died in a hospital near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, two weeks after suffering a stroke.
Outside Israel's parliament on Thursday, an estimated 50,000 Israelis filed past Peres' flag-draped coffin as it lay in state.
Former US President Bill Clinton, arriving in Israel a day before the burial, visited the plaza in front of parliament to stand, head bowed, in front of Peres' casket.
The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab states to have signed peace treaties with Israel, were not on the roster of participants issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry. But the Egyptian foreign minister was scheduled to attend and King Abdullah of Jordan sent a telegram of condolences.
Obama was leading a delegation of 33 US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.
Israel laid on heavy security, deploying some 8,000 police and intermittently closing the main highway between Tel Aviv's airport and Jerusalem for Obama's motorcade.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
