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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged the Israelis and the Palestinians to take a step back and return to negotiating terms before time runs out.
“The Israeli and Palestinian people face a shared fate on shared land. There is no erasing the other”, he told a UN committee on Palestinian rights.
Ban also called “on the parties to step back from the brink and find the path of peace before hope and time run out”.
His comments reflect the international alarm over the recent spate of violence in east Jerusalem and the deadlock over peace talks, fueling another flare-up between the two after the 50-day war. The lack of peace prospects, along with the ongoing Israeli campaign to build settlement blocs on occupied territory are chipping away at the UN’s two-state solution, by which a new state of Palestine and Israel would co-exist.
According to Ban, both the Palestinians and the Israelis appeared to be “losing any sense of connection” and that “when that goes, it is not far over the precipice”.
“We, as the international community, must assume responsibility for what is a collective failure to advance a political solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The mindless cycle of destruction must end. The virtuous circle of peace must begin”, Ban said.
With no solution in sight, European parliaments and governments are moving towards Palestinian recognition, with France’s parliament set to vote on a non-binding resolution on December 2nd. The Palestinians are expected to formally submit a draft resolution in the UN Security Council calling for the complete withdrawal of Israel from occupied territory in 2016.
Despite statements from the Palestinians that the resolution would be presented in November, according to Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour, no date has been set for the proposal’s submission.