Israel yesterday rejected a EU call for the UN to recognize a Palestinian state by a certain deadline even if Israel and Palestinians fail to agree on a peace deal.
“A peace agreement can come only following direct negotiations and cannot be imposed,” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told public radio.
Lieberman was commenting on a speech by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in London on Saturday in which he called for the international community to set a deadline for recognizing the state of Palestine.
PHOTO: EPA
“The mediator has to set the timetable,” Solana said, according to a transcript of his speech. “If the parties are not able to stick to it, then a solution backed by the international community should ... be put on the table.”
“After a fixed deadline, a UN Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution. This should include all the parameters of borders, refugees, Jerusalem and security arrangements,” Solana said.
“It would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the UN, and set a calendar for implementation. It would mandate the resolution of other remaining territorial disputes and legitimize the end of claims,” he said.
The Israeli foreign ministry also blasted Solana’s call, which would effectively impose a solution to the decades-old Middle East conflict, saying a settlement “can only be achieved through negotiations between the parties.”
“Any approach that calls for an artificial deadline undermines the prospects of actually reaching a bilateral agreement,” it said in a statement.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from its closest ally Washington to take steps in the stalled peace process, such as freezing all settlement activity on occupied land, but the right-leaning government led by hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to do so.
US President Barack Obama’s efforts to jumpstart the peace process have raised fears in Israel that Washington would lessen its support for the Jewish state as it seeks to repair US relations with the Muslim world.
The Israelis and Palestinians revived peace negotiations at an international conference in November 2007, but the talks were put on ice after Israel launched its war on Gaza in December.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will not revive the negotiations unless Israel halts settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, in accordance with a 2003 peace “road map” that also commits the Palestinians to rein in militants.
Lieberman, who heads an ultranationalist party in Netanyahu’s coalition government, questioned in the radio interview whether Abbas, who holds sway only in the West Bank, spoke for all Palestinians.
“Who exactly does Abu Mazen [Abbas] represent? At best, half the people,” Lieberman said, adding that the Gaza Strip has been under the control of Hamas Islamists since they took over the territory in 2007 after defeating fighters loyal to Abbas’s secular Fatah movement.
In remarks to his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu repeated a call to Abbas to meet immediately.
Also See: Niches of happiness in the West Bank
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS