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the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet as a new round of Mideast peace talks begins, Secretary of State John Kerry thinks there are more reasons than ever to move quickly.
• In Kerry's thinking, time is running out.
• It would be difficult to remove a mushrooming number of Israeli settlements, which have doubled in the West Bank since 2000, even if Israel wanted to. The Palestinians are claiming that Arabs will outnumber Jews in the Holy Land by 2020. And last year, the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem -- a move that could let the Palestinians take their complaints over settlements to the International Criminal Court.
• The new round of talks, which resume Tuesday in Washington, follows six months of shuttle diplomacy to restart negotiations that broke down in 2008. An attempt to restart them in 2010 failed after a single day. And before that, scores of diplomats have failed to broker peace.
• After five years of diplomatic stalemate, there has been a flurry of activity in recent days to set the stage for the talks that all sides agree will be difficult.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first Middle East peace talks in years are underway a few blocks from the White House, but President Barack Obama is conspicuously keeping his distance.
• Burned by a failed peace effort in his first term, Obama has largely ceded this latest attempt to forge an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians to Secretary of State John Kerry. The move marks a rare power shift for an administration that prefers to centralize foreign policy decisions within the White House.
• Obama's hands-off approach is in part a vote of confidence in Kerry, who has embraced the vexing and emotional issue with gusto since joining the administration earlier this year. It also signals a calculation by the White House that direct presidential intervention is best reserved for the final stages of negotiations -- if the process ever reaches that point -- or for moments of tension when Obama might be called upon to keep the talks afloat.
• Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace adviser to Democratic and Republican presidents, backed the White House's approach.
• "You don't want to waste presidential capital," said Miller, now vice president of

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