Jerusalem - New York: Europe and the Arabs
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, expressed his disappointment regarding the Israeli Knesset vote regarding “opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated what the Secretary-General has repeatedly said that the only path to achieving sustainable peace for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples is to end the occupation and a negotiated two-state solution: Israel and the independent, geographically contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace. Security within the framework of secure and recognized borders based on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states.
Dujarric added in the daily press conference that the Knesset vote contradicts United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements.
The Secretary-General said in a speech delivered on his behalf before the Security Council by his Chief of Staff Courtenay Rattray: “The recent developments stick a knife into the heart of any possibility of reaching a two-state solution. The geography of the occupied West Bank is changing steadily through Israeli administrative and legal steps.”
One of these steps is the transfer of powers in the occupied West Bank to a civilian representative in the Israeli Civil Administration, which the Secretary-General described - in his speech - as “another step towards extending Israeli sovereignty over this occupied land.” “If these measures are left unaddressed, they threaten to cause irreparable damage,” he said.