UN chief calls on Israel, Palestinians to resume peace talks

During his two-day visit to Israel, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said Monday that Israel and Palestinians must "urgently" resume peace talks.

Ban is scheduled to meet with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, along with other Israeli and Palestinian officials on Monday and Tuesday.

"Leaders on both sides need to urgently take concrete steps to restore hope and a political horizon so that Israeli and Palestinian people see a pathway to peace, not a quagmire of recurring violence," he said during a speech at Tel Aviv University, where he received an honorary award from the institution, according to a statement by the university's spokesperson.

The UN secretary-general said Israelis and Palestinians should engage with the Middle East Quartet - a forum which includes the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia - in order to resume peace talks.

The quartet is preparing a report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be issued in the near future, with criticism expected to be directed towards Israel due to its settlement policies.

Ban restated the need to resume peace talks during a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem.

He addressed the nine-month-long ongoing wave of violence in the area, which killed 32 Israelis and 206 Palestinians.

"Stabbings, shootings and bombings will not achieve anything because violence is never the solution," the secretary-general told President Rivlin prior to their meeting, according to a statement from the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process spokesperson.

Denouncing Palestinian violence, he equally blamed Israel for its "nearly 50 years of occupation," which had a "devastating impact on Palestinian lives," and called upon leaders from both sides to assume responsibility.

Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip territories, where five million Palestinians lived, during the 1967 Mideast War.

"Leaders on both sides need to urgently take concrete steps to restore hope," added the secretary-general, reiterating his support for the two-state solution as "the only viable to option" to end the conflict.

The last round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ended on April 2014 with no results.

Throughout the ongoing wave of violence and the talks deadlock, several international initiatives exist which call for the resumption of peace talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently in Rome meeting with U.S. Secretary John Kerry to discuss the initiatives.

France offered its own initiative in January, declaring it is willing to hold a peace conference in France later this year, hoping it would kick-start negotiations.

While Palestinians supported the call, Israelis rejected it, claiming that an international forum would enable Palestinians to forestall direct negotiations and set up their preconditions.

However, some Israeli officials recently suggested that the resumption of peace talks should be meditated by regional Arab states, led by Egypt, according to an amended version of the 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative, also known as the Arab Peace Initiative.

According to the initiative, Israel and Arab regional states would normalize relations between them once Israelis and Palestinians reach a deal based on the two-state peace solution. Endit