In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
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 JERUSALEM — Dealing a blow to the Obama administration’s efforts to restart Middle East peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton failed Saturday to persuade the Palestinian leader to accept an Israeli proposal that would slow but not stop the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, insisted that Israel must halt all construction of housing units before broader negotiations could begin. He rebuffed an Israeli proposal — developed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and relayed by Mrs. Clinton — to complete about 3,000 units and temporarily freeze other construction, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said after the meeting. 
  
 “This is a nonstarter,” Mr. Erekat said. “Mr. Netanyahu has a choice, settlements or peace, and he has chosen settlements.” 
  
 Mrs. Clinton’s meetings, which came after a three-day trip to Pakistan, followed on President Obama’s pledge last month to redouble American efforts to revive the peace process. But on a marathon day of diplomacy that took her from the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi to Israel and then on to Morocco, she discovered that if anything, the hurdles to a peace negotiation have grown larger. 
  
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 American officials insist Mrs. Clinton did not push Mr. Abbas to accept the Israeli proposal in her two-hour meeting with him, which was hastily arranged and took place in Abu Dhabi,. But she made clear later she was eager to narrow the gap between the two sides. 
  
 “We know that negotiations often take positions that then have to be worked through, once the actual process starts,” she said at a news conference in Jerusalem, where she met with Mr. Netanyahu. 
  
 She also markedly softened her tone on whether Israel should cease all settlement construction, something she and Mr. Obama have demanded since early in the administration. While Mrs. Clinton said the administration’s desire to see a complete freeze had not changed, she characterized Mr. Netanyahu’s offer of “restraint” on settlements as “unprecedented.” 
  
 And she conspicuously avoided criticizing the demolition of Palestinians’ houses in East Jerusalem, though she said her opposition to it had not changed. In March, on her first visit to the Middle East as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton strongly condemned the demolitions, which Palestinians say are aimed at squeezing them out and would hamper the creation of a Palestinian state. 
  
 In recent days, the municipal authorities in Jerusalem have ordered the demolition of more houses. 
  
 For his part, Mr. Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of using settlements as a pretext to avoid negotiations. 
  
 “We think we should sit around that negotiating table right away,” he said. “I think what we should do on the path to peace is to simply is get on it, and get with it.” 
  
 The administration’s efforts to revive peace negotiations have been unsuccessful, largely for reasons having to do both with its own ambitious goals and with unfavorable regional politics. 
  
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 In addition to the settlement freeze, Mr. Obama has tried to extract a series of reciprocal confidence-building gestures from Israel’s Arab neighbors — for example, opening Israeli trade offices in those countries, or allowing Israeli passenger planes to fly over Arab territory. 
  
 Saudi Arabia rebuffed these requests, which made it less likely that other Arab countries would follow with such gestures. In Israel, the election of a right-wing government under Mr. Netanyahu dimmed the prospects for a settlement freeze, given the pressures from his coalition. 
  
 Mr. Netanyahu has offered a moratorium on the construction of new settlements in the West Bank, but not in East Jerusalem. He would also allow additional construction in the West Bank to support the growing families of settlers — a provision known as “natural growth.” 
  
 The publication of a United Nations report alleging war crimes in Gaza last winter greatly complicated the calculus. Mr. Netanyahu said that if the report, which accuses both sides of war crimes, were advanced in the United Nations, it would kill off talks before they started. 
  
 The United States pressed the Palestinian Authority to bottle up the report in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which it agreed to do. But that set off a political conflagration at home, and Mr. Abbas reversed himself, voting to forward the report to the Security Council. 
  
 With his credibility damaged and with elections looming in January, Mr. Abbas has been reluctant to enter talks. And he is citing Mr. Obama’s tough line on settlements as a reason to hold out. 
  
 “Secretary Clinton told us,” Mr. Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said, “that the United States considers settlements to be illegitimate and does not accept the annexation of East Jerusalem.” ||||| JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's hope to kick-start Arab-Israeli peace talks took a blow Saturday, after Palestinian leaders ruled out returning to negotiations without a complete freeze on Israeli settlement activity. 
  
 Mrs. Clinton and other senior U.S. officials met Saturday in the United Arab Emirates with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a high-level push for an immediate resumption of talks between the Palestinians and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. 
  
 View Full Image Getty Images U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 
  
 Mrs. Clinton then traveled to Israel where she met Mr. Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials. She was accompanied by the Obama administration's special envoy to the Middle East, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. 
  
 Senior Palestinian officials, however, speaking after Mr. Abbas's meeting with Mrs. Clinton, restated their position that negotiations couldn't resume without Israel halting all building activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 
  
 The Palestinians said Mrs. Clinton conveyed to Mr. Abbas an Israeli proposal to freeze most building in the disputed territories as a precursor to formal talks. But the halt would not include East Jerusalem or thousands of units already being constructed in the West Bank. 
  
 Mr. Abbas and members of his government said Saturday this wasn't acceptable. 
  
 "When Israel will continue the already approved housing units, they will be doing the average apartment building of the last five years, which is not a settlement freeze by any means," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority official briefed on Mr. Abbas's meeting. "This is not good enough for the Palestinians." 
  
 Mr. Abbas, at a press conference in Abu Dhabi, attacked Israel for not agreeing to the settlement freeze. 
  
 The continued settlement activity, and recent unrest in Jerusalem, are "pouring oil into the bonfire [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], crossing red lines and preparing the ground for further acts of violence." 
  
 Mr. Netanyahu and Mrs. Clinton, speaking ahead of their bilateral meeting in Jerusalem, downplayed the need for a total settlement freeze as a precursor for negotiations to start. 
  
 "We are prepared to begin negotiations immediately," Mr. Netanyahu said. "There's not been in the last 16 years...any demand ever put on any restrictions on settlement activity as a precursor for negotiations." 
  
 Mrs. Clinton backed the Israeli leader's position. "What the prime minister is saying is historically accurate," the secretary of state said. "What the prime minister has offered...is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations." 
  
 U.S. officials traveling with Mrs. Clinton said they didn't press Mr. Abbas to accept any specific offer from Mr. Netanyahu, but rather were seeking to help narrow differences between the two sides. 
  
 "From the secretary's standpoint, we're using the time to constructively engage here in the region and to see what we can do to move the process forward," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who traveled with Mrs. Clinton to Israel Saturday. The Obama administration had initially attempted to set the stage for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks by calling for concessions from both Israel and the Arabs. Mr. Mitchell had specifically been seeking to get Mr. Netanyahu to agree to a complete settlement freeze in exchange for leading Arab states taking steps towards normalizing their relations with Israel, such as establishing trade and telecommunications links. 
  
 Neither the Israelis nor the Arab governments completely backed Washington's initiative. And in recent weeks, Mr. Mitchell and other senior U.S. officials have downplayed their focus on this negotiating strategy, calling instead for immediate talks without "preconditions." 
  
 Mrs. Clinton will travel to Morocco Saturday night to meet with Arab foreign ministers attending a regional economic-development conference. U.S. officials said they'd use the venue to seek to strengthen Mr. Abbas's position in the region and to gain greater Arab support for the peace process. 
  
 Mr. Abbas is seen as in a weakened position politically inside the Palestinian territories. Elections are slated for next year there, and the militant Palestinian organization, Hamas, is expected to compete strongly against Mr. Abbas's Fatah party. 
  
 Mr. Abbas has also been condemned across the Arab world for initially agreeing to a U.S. request not to support a recently completed United Nations report that charges Israel with engaging in war crimes during its military campaign against Hamas last year in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Abbas later changed his position, but the political damage had already been done in the Palestinian territories. 
  
 U.S. and Israeli officials say the U.N. report was biased and undercut efforts to restart the process. 
  
 Iran's nuclear program has also been a major topic of conversation for Mrs. Clinton as she's made her swing through the Middle East, according to U.S. officials. 
  
 The U.S. and other U.N. Security Council members are currently awaiting a response from Tehran to their offer to more closely scrutinize Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. The deal would see Iran ship the majority of it fissile material to Russia for reprocessing in exchange for Moscow and France sending back the material in a form usable in Tehran's research reactor. 
  
 The Obama administration sees the deal as ensuring Iran won't have enough fissile material to produce an atomic weapon in the near-term. It's also seen as buying Washington more time to forge a comprehensive agreement to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. 
  
 Mr. Netanyahu has suggested Israel might take military action against Iran if diplomacy doesn't succeed in ending Tehran's nuclear activities. 
  
 In recent days, Iran has indicated it would reject the deal. Mrs. Clinton said the U.S. still hoped for the agreement, but added that the international community couldn't wait indefinitely. 
  
 "We are willing to work toward creative outcomes," Mrs. Clinton said. "But we're not going to wait forever."? 
  
 Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com |||||
A: 
Hillary Clinton's day of diplomacy in the Mideast yielded little progress. She met separately with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu but did not secure a deal to restart peace talks. The main sticking point: Abbas rebuffed an offer from Netanyahu—and relayed by Clinton—to slow but not stop new settlements. Clinton called the offer "unprecedented," but Abbas called it a "non-starter," reports the New York Times. “Mr. Netanyahu has a choice, settlements or peace, and he has chosen settlements," said Abbas. Netanyahu said no such restrictions on settlements have ever been a condition for talks, notes the Wall Street Journal. Clinton agreed: "What the prime minister is saying is historically accurate," she said. "What the prime minister has offered ... is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations."