AFP/United Nations
The US warned yesterday 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 tomorrow, 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, UN and US—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 Mahmoud Abbas made his September 23 bid for Palestinian membership of the UN, which the US 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 tomorrow, the Security Council is to meet on 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 programme 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.” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat called yesterday for the Quartet to hold Israel responsible for the failure to resume peace talks. “We demand that the Quartet... declare openly and clearly which party is an obstacle to the peace process,” Erakat told AFP. “It is Israel which is pursuing a policy of settlement and of Judaising Jerusalem.” Erakat said the Quartet envoys should “take into account the inequality between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, to apportion the responsibility for blocking the peace process.” He slammed the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which he said “increases Israeli settlement and rejects a serious peace process.” The Palestinians say that face-to-face talks with Israel will not resume as long as Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank continues. Netanyahu has reportedly offered to freeze government settlement construction, but the Palestinians say that represents a small portion of overall settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and that anything short of a full freeze is unacceptable.