Demonstrators on Wednesday held a vigil outside the White House, urging leaders who converged in Washington for direct Middle East peace talks to genuinely advance the peace process, Xinhua reported.
Joshua Hough, communications director with umbrella group the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, said the group organized the vigil to call on leaders to base the talks on human rights, international law and UN resolutions.
"The problem of this process is it's not leading anywhere," he said of previous rounds of talks, and called for leaders not to turn this round of talks into a "photo opportunity."
The U.S. government is hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for direct negotiations starting Thursday, the first direct talks between the two sides in 20 months. U.S. President Barack Obama held bilateral meetings with the leaders Wednesday.
Andra Sufi, one of the dozens of demonstrators participating in the vigil, said the leaders should honor both the needs of Israelis and those of Palestinians.
"I'm hoping that they will acknowledge the needs of one another, honor the necessary borders that needs to be made, honor the idea of settlements, not profit from the occupations that is going on right now," she said.
Ziv Kaufman, an Israeli American who came earlier in the day to demonstrate outside the White House, said he wishes there will be peace eventually, "but as long as Hamas controls Gaza, I personally don't see a peace solution."
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, rejected the direct negotiations, saying the call by Washington and the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators "is a new attempt to exert trickery against the Palestinian people."
Hough, on the other hand, acknowledged the positiveness that is being brought upon by the resumption of the talks.
"The leaders have to talk...that gives us a sense of optimism, but it's only the beginning," he said.