Pakistan seeks action against Israel for defying Middle East peace bids

Pakistan has called on the UN Security Council to hold Israel accountable for its continued defiance of international efforts to bring about a just settlement of the Middle East dispute.
“Flying in the face of the international community’s will, Israel continues to implement policies in defiance of international law to undermine the basis of the two-state solution,” Ambassador Raza Bashir Tarar, the acting Pakistani Permanent representative to the UN, told the Security Council.
“Its (Israel’s) efforts to redraw the map of Palestine by continuing the illegal settlement activity, the continued persecution of Palestinians and reluctance to accept the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations, is taking the region to a state akin to a powder keg,” he said in a debate on the Middle East situation.
The Pakistani envoy supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination, as well as the creation of an independent fact-finding mission in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.
He noted that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s February visit to the region was a “timely initiative” that would help refocus international attention on the festering dispute.
Tarar strongly condemned the April 4th announcement of new tenders for over 1,100 Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, whose mayor also announced measures that would effectively divide that city.
Those actions represented major roadblocks to peace, he said.
For its part, the Security Council should help create the conditions for restarting the peace process, the Pakistani envoy said.
Pakistan will continue to engage other Security Council members to encourage a council visit to the occupied territories.
He pointed out that more than 4,700 Palestinians languished in Israeli prisons and that the international community should force the occupying power to amend its ways.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza was diminishing the economic prospects of that area. Still Palestine had proved it was ready to take its place among the community of nations, he said.
Pakistan supported lasting peace for all Middle Easterners, as laid out in the Madrid Terms of Reference and the Arab League Initiative. Progress on Syria, Israel and the Syria-Lebanon border area was also essential and he called on Israel to withdraw from the Syrian Golan.
“The region is in turmoil, and the Arab Spring cannot and would not bloom fully without fulfillment of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” the Pakistani envoy said. “Benign neglect, inaction, complicity with oppression or apathy will only discredit the advocates of peace and strengthen the narrative of extremists.”