Palestinian FM urges UN Mideast Quartet to discuss two-state solution

The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs on Sunday called on the UN's Middle East Quartet to hold an urgent meeting in a bid to save the two-state solution.

In a press statement received by The New Arab, the ministry urged for a meeting of world ministers to organise an international peace conference.

"We are looking forward to emanating from the international conference real and feasible direct negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under multilateral international supervision, and based on international peace references, leading within a specific and clear timeframe to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine," the statement said.

The Israeli government has been "misleading" the international community over peace efforts, the statement said, and continuing its policy of illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

"Israel continues to beg the international community, mainly the US administration, to give it a chance to survive. In contrast, it is clear from Israeli local and international reports that the Bennett-Lapid government is considered an extension of Benjamin Netanyahu's governments regarding the Palestinian issue," the statement added.

"Its settlement practices in expanding and stealing more land from the Palestinians [...] undermine any opportunity to implement the principle of the two-state solution."

Israeli settlements activity is the thorniest issue in Palestinian-Israeli talks and one of the main reasons for halting the last round of direct peace negotiations in 2014.

Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and has controlled them ever since, against international law.

The Palestinians seek to establish a Palestinian state on these territories with East Jerusalem as its capital.