New York: The Palestinians have invited the UN Security Council to visit the West Bank, Gaza and occupied east Jerusalem, a move Israel says is an attempt to try to divert attention from getting back to direct negotiations to settle the decades-old conflict.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, told reporters after a council meeting on the Mideast on Tuesday that he sent a letter inviting the 15 council members "to see with their own eyes the reality of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory" including Israel's "illegal" colony building.
Israel's United Nations Ambassador Ron Prosor, who followed Mansour to the microphone, expressed surprise at the invitation saying "this is an attempt to try and divert attention, and again try and internationalise the conflict, and not really try and stick to what is important on both sides — and that is direct negotiations."
Mansour and Prosor spoke after UN political chief B. Lynn Pascoe told the council exploratory low-level talks in Amman, Jordan, between the Israelis and Palestinians had stalled and prospects for resuming direct negotiations "remain dim."
"The situation on the ground in both Gaza and the West Bank remains dangerous and ultimately unsustainable," he said.
‘Contradiction'
Pascoe urged Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to overcome the political impasse using an outline proposed by the US, UN, European Union and Russia — the so-called Quartet — to try to reach a negotiated solution by the end of the year.
Mansour and Prosor each blamed the other side for the failure of the Amman talks, which ended in late January.
Mansour said in five meetings in Jordan the Israelis introduced ideas that are in "complete contradiction with the global consensus" that negotiations must begin on the basis of pre-1967 war borders, with agreed land swaps, and that Israel's security would be guaranteed by third parties but not a single Israeli soldier would be left on Palestinian land.
