UNITED NATIONS – Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the UN general assembly yesterday that he was reaching out to the Palestinian people but cautioned that peace could not be won with a UN resolution.
“I extend my hand to the Palestinian people,” he told the 193-nation assembly, shortly after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application for full UN membership to secretary general Ban Ki-moon despite Israeli and US objections.
“The truth is that Israel wants peace, the truth is that I want peace,” he said, adding that “we cannot achieve peace through UN resolutions”.
“The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state,” he said.
Mr Netanyahu added that if there was such a peace, “Israel will not be the last state to welcome a Palestinian state into the United Nations. We will be the first.”
It was also time for the Palestinians to acknowledge that “Israel is the Jewish state”, he told the assembly.
He also made an appeal to Mr Abbas for direct peace talks with the Palestinians to begin without delay in New York.
“Let’s meet here today in the United Nations,” Mr Netanyahu said.
Direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed a year ago.
The Palestinians pulled out after Israel refused to extend a moratorium on new Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said the Middle East quartet had agreed on a statement calling for direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians to resume within one month and complete within one year.
Baroness Ashton said the quartet – the EU, the UN, the US and Russia – had drawn up its statement after looking very carefully at the issues presented by both sides.
“We hope the parties will react positively,” she told reporters at the UN.
Mr Ban said: “I hope that we will issue a quartet statement right after this meeting, and I sincerely hope that the parties will respond constructively to our statement.”
Mr Ban was speaking before meeting US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Baroness Ashton. – (Reuters)