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Britain urges 'major push' by next US president on Israel-Palestine
Whoever wins next week's presidential election should immediately rekindle negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Britain's foreign secretary said Tuesday.
“The best hope of achieving a solution is a major push by the United States in the coming months and over the coming year. Everything else is second best to that,” William Hague told Parliament. “In our view, the priority is for the United States — after the election, obviously, and whoever is successful — to lead a major push to restart negotiations and arrive at a two-state solution. The opportunity to do that is slipping away, and may have slipped away completely within another year or two.”
Hague went on to say that failing to restart a peace process that has languished since 2009 because of disagreements over Israeli settlements and borders would usher in a “new and even more dangerous situation.” The comments come as the Palestinians prepare to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize them as a non-member state, a move strongly opposed by the United States and Israel.
Hague said any unilateral move by the Palestinians to seek statehood “would take us further away from our goal rather than nearer to it.” But he acknowledged that the Palestinians are running out of patience and said that if the two parties and the United States fail to reach agreement in the next couple of years, “that will require many nations to reconsider their approach.”
“Among Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn their backs on the prospect of peace. Let us leave behind those who thrive on conflict, those who reject the right of Israel to exist,” President Obama said during his Sept. 25 address to the U.N. General Assembly. “The road is hard, but the destination is clear: a secure Jewish state of Israel and an independent, prosperous Palestine.”
Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his part lambasted Obama's inaction on the issue during last week's foreign policy debate. Romney has come under fire for telling a closed-door fundraiser earlier this year that the conflict “is going to remain an unsolved problem” because “the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace.”
“Are Israel and the Palestinians closer to reaching a peace agreement?” Romney asked rhetorically. “No, they haven’t had talks in two years. We have not seen the progress we need to have, and I’m convinced that with strong leadership and an effort to build a strategy based upon helping these nations reject extremism, we can see the kind of peace and prosperity the world demands.”
