The Palestinians, meanwhile, failed to secure enough votes in December 2014 for the passage of a resolution that would have required Israel to seal a Middle East peace deal within a one-year timetable. And senior U.N.-based diplomats say it remains highly unlikely Washington will take up any new initiatives at the United Nations before the USA presidential election.
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France’s ambassador to the U.N., Franç ois Delattre, called the report “an important step in our collective efforts to save and promote the two states solution”.
FILE – A Palestinian man reacts as rescue workers search for victims under the rubble of a house, which witnesses said was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 29, 2014.
Attacks fell significantly in frequency this year, but incitement to violence remained troubling, the report said.
The United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations – which comprise the quartet – said settlements, demolition of Palestinian homes and Israeli confiscation of land were “steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution”.
It said the secretary-general underscored the report’s finding that actors need to take steps to counter negative trends on the ground.
Israel says the violence is fueled by a Palestinian campaign of lies and incitement, compounded on social media sites that glorify attacks. The Quartet hopes that the parties will engage with the global group, but the official said that doing so is up to the Palestinians and the Israelis.
The report refers to both sides, and specifically to the Palestinians and Israelis in relation to violence, incitement to violence, Israeli settlement construction and related policies, Palestinian unity and institution building. He said the report “attempts to equalize the responsibilities between a people under occupation and a foreign military occupier”.
The report comes at a violent time. Israel has killed at least 201 Palestinians, 136 of whom it said were assailants.
The Israeli Air Force attacked targets belonging to terror groups in the Gaza Strip early Saturday morning, the IDF said, hours after a rocket fired from the coastal enclave landed outside a preschool in the border town of Sderot, causing damage but no injuries.
Moreover, the report called on each side to independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution. But recent terrorist attacks, including a bus bombing in Jerusalem in April and the shooting deaths of four Israelis at a Tel Aviv cafe in June, highlighted the ongoing bloodshed.
On Friday, a Palestinian woman tried to knife an Israeli police trooper in the West Bank city of Hebron and was shot dead, police said.
In a message to the International Conference in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace in Geneva on June 29-30, Ban noted that the title of the conference – Peace is possible – frameworks for a way forward was apt, as no one should give up hope of negotiating a settlement between Israel and Palestine.
It withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but almost 600,000 Israeli settlers remain in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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It also calls for Gaza and the West Bank to be reunified “under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority”.
