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UNITED NATIONS: The United States warned Monday that the Palestinian bid for UN membership could “derail” Middle East peace efforts, ahead of a new international attempt to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiations.
The two sides, who will meet international mediators in Jerusalem on Wednesday, remained at loggerheads over the deadlocked peace process as UN Security Council powers made new appeals for full negotiations, which if they fail could risk new violence.
At a Security Council meeting, Israel called the Palestinian bid for UN recognition a “march of folly.” The Palestinian UN envoy said Israel's spreading construction in occupied territory encouraged “terror rampages” by settlers.
Mediators from the diplomatic Quartet -- the European Union, Russia, United Nations and United States -- are to meet separately in Jerusalem with Israeli and Palestinian representatives to try to break the impasse.
The new Quartet initiative was launched the day that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas made his September 23 bid for Palestinian membership of the UN, which the United States has vowed to veto.
The Palestinian membership campaign “will not advance the peace process, but rather will complicate, delay and perhaps derail prospects for a negotiated settlement,” US ambassador Susan Rice told the Security Council meeting.
The US and Israeli governments say that only new direct talks can reach the accord needed to set up a Palestinian state.
Rice said the US administration was working “vigorously” with all sides to resume talks frozen since September last year.
Amidst a diplomatic battle for votes on Palestinian membership, Rice said “we urge all members of this council and all member states to unite to help create a positive climate for resuming negotiations.”
While the new contacts are to be held Wednesday, the Security Council is to meet November 11 to decide on whether to hold a formal vote on the Palestinian membership application now being considered by a special committee.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed in September 2010 when Israel ended a moratorium on settlement building.
It has since embarked on a new program of approving houses and settlements, including in East Jerusalem, which Rice called “deeply disappointing.” Russia, European powers and the UN all condemned the settlement work.
But Israel's UN ambassador Ron Prosor said the settlement objections were just a “pretext” being used by Palestinians to avoid negotiations.
Prosor called the Palestinian bid for UN membership a “march of folly” and said the Palestinians are “far from meeting the basic criteria for statehood” as it did not have full control over Palestinian territory.
Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour accused Israel of “gobbling up more Palestinian homes and properties and displacing more Palestinian families, in addition to permitting the terror rampages of the Israeli settlers against our civilians.”
Mansour said efforts to start serious talks had been “undermined, obstructed and stalled” by “Israeli intransigence.”
