Quartet report urges end to Israel settlement expansion: UN official

An upcoming report by the Quartet on the Middle East, a foursome involved in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will reportedly urge Tel Aviv to take urgent steps to halt its illegal settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian lands.

United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov made the announcement as he briefed the UN Security Council on a long-awaited Quartet report on Thursday.

Mladenov said Israel’s construction of new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank was one of three "negative trends" that must be quickly reversed to keep the hope of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement alive.

Over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. However, Tel Aviv has defied calls to stop the settlement expansions in the occupied territories.

The report prepared by the Quartet, comprising of the UN, the US, Russia and the European Union, is expected to be released on Friday after months of delays.

The document “is expected to expose the full extent of Israeli policies beyond settlements construction in the West Bank,” an unnamed source familiar with the text told AFP.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Mladenov noted that the Quartet report outlined a “reasonable set of steps’ that could set Israel and the Palestinians “firmly along a navigable course towards establishing a comprehensive peace.”

The Israelis and Palestinians can only reach a compromise through direct, bilateral negotiations, the UN official warned, saying, “It is time for both sides to rise to the challenge.”

He further urged the Security Council to endorse the recommendations of the Quartet report in a move that would turn the text into an internationally-agreed roadmap for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

Meanwhile, Francois Delattre, French ambassador to the UN, noted that the document could help advance plans for a Paris conference on the Middle East later this year.

France has put forward a peace initiative to renew negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The last round of the so-called peace talks collapsed in 2014. Tel Aviv’s illegal settlement activities and its refusal to release senior Palestinian prisoners were among major reasons behind the failure of the talks.

“The French initiative and the Quartet report mutually reinforce each other and have a common goal to put the peace process back on track," Delattre said.

Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to address the causes of violence in the occupied lands, including “the paralysis” the so-called peace process and “the nearly a half-century of occupation.”

The occupied territories have also witnessed heightened tensions since August 2015, when Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds in an alleged bid to change the status quo of the holy Muslim site.

Nearly 220 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in what is regarded as the third Palestinian Intifada (uprising) since the beginning of last October.

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