The UN official reiterated the Quartetآ’s pledge to actively support an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and also reiterates that a negotiated two-state outcome that meets Israeli security needs and creates a sovereign Palestinian state, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues is the only way to achieve an enduring peace.
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“These trends risk entrenching a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict which is incompatible with realizing the national aspirations of both peoples”, the office said.
Recognizing the urgent need to reverse that destructive dynamic, the Middle East Quartet had worked with the concerned parties and key stakeholders to preserve the two-State solution, he continued.
A new Middle East Quartet report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is flawed because it “lacks objectivity”, charged the head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Saturday.
FILE – An Israeli flag is seen near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim on the outskirts of Jerusalem in a September 7, 2009, photo.
Mladenov said Israel’s West Bank settlement-building is making the prospect of a cohesive Palestinian state “much more hard and complicated”, Palestinian divisions are hampering peace efforts, and the ongoing “violence, terrorism and incitement” are undermining trust between the two sides.
The highly-anticipated report on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was released on Friday to angry reactions and little surprise.
The Israeli military says it has struck militant sites in Gaza in response to a rocket attack that hit a kindergarten in the Israeli border town of Sderot.
The draft said Israel had seized some 70 per cent of Area C, which includes 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank and the majority of agricultural land, natural resources and land reserves. “Israel rejects any attempt to draw moral equivalence between construction and terrorism”, the statement by Mr. Netanyahu’s office said. In the 24 hours before the report was published, Palestinians carried out three attacks on Israelis leaving two dead and others wounded and the government said the Palestinians didn’t condemn them, instead referring to one attacker as a “martyr”. A senior State Department official, Reuters reported, said Friday that the United States is “open to having the Security Council welcome the report, but that’s all at this point”. For its part, Palestinian leadership must live up to its responsibility to speak clearly and act firmly against violence and incitement, the Secretary-General said. “I don’t know why he doesn’t do that, but obviously it’s something we feel like should be done”, the official said.
The Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas is based in the West Bank, while Islamist group Hamas has been in control of Gaza since 2007.
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In its recommendations, the Quartet called on Israel to “cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion”, as well the denial of Palestinian development.
