Mideast Mediators Plan Summit

Key Mideast mediators — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — will meet this month to discuss the way toward Israeli-Palestinian peace as tensions escalate in the region.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power made the announcement during the U.N. Security Council’s monthly Mideast debate, calling the status quo “unsustainable.” She urged both sides “to exercise maximum restraint and avoid steps that threaten to push Israeli-Palestinian relations into a cycle of further escalation.”

The meeting of envoys from the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators will be on Jan. 26 in Brussels, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the Security Council that the Quartet, at ministerial level, “should be promptly reinvigorated.”

Chile’s Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz, the current council president, said “a lot more” international engagement is needed including the Quartet, the Arab League and others.

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas of remaining “committed to the three no’s. He will not negotiate, he will not recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and he will not make peace.” He accused the Palestinian Authority of committing “every form of diplomatic treachery” last year by abandoning peace talks, forming a government with Hamas, honoring “convicted terrorists” and breaking its word by signing up to join dozens of treaties and conventions including the ICC.

This article appeared in print on page 6 of the January 19th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.