‘’Unfortunately, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel has been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias and sometimes even discrimination,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted during a visit to Jerusalem this week.
Addressing students participating in Rishon Lezion College of Management’s Model UN program at the UN Headquarters in Jerusalem, he said Israel should be treated equal to all the other 192 member states, in a response to complaints that Israel receives more criticism than any other member country in the world body.
He told them he had come to the region for the sixth time to express his support for the renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. "I have never been this optimist," he said, adding that the international community had never had such expectations and hope that the peace process would reach a solution.
“This time, I expect real peace,” the UN head said, urging both sides ‘’to be patient’’ and adding that negotiations are still the best way to reach a two-state solution. “The Israeli and Palestinian people are neighbors and have no choice but to live in harmony and peace, side by side.”
The first round of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on Wednesday in Jerusalem lasted around five hours. The only information that escaped the media blackout was news that the negotiators would meet again weekly. However both sides remained cautious about breakthroughs.
On Friday, Ban Ki-moon met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told him that Palestinian refusaml to recognize that Israel is a Jewih state is the core issue keeping the sides from reaching a peace agreement, rejecting claims that settlement construction was the key roadblock.
‘’As far as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, we have to get to the root cause of the problem and the root cause was and remains the persistent refusal to recognize the Jewish State in any boundary,’’ Netanyahu said.
‘’ It doesn’t have to do with the settlements – that’s an issue that has to be resolved, but this is not the reason that we have a continual conflict. The conflict preceded the establishment of a single settlement by half a century and when we rooted out all the settlements in Gaza, the attacks continued because of this basic opposition to the Jewish State. I think it’s important to understand that if we build a few hundred apartments in Gilo or Ramot, or the other Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, or in urban blocks that everybody knows, including the Palestinian negotiating team, according to the Al Jazeera leaks, will be part of the final peace map in Israel, I think these are not the real issues that we need to discuss.’’
He continued : ‘’’The real issue is how to get a demilitarized Palestinian state to finally recognize and accept the one and only Jewish State.’’
The Israeli Prime Minister called on Ban to look into what he said was the abuse of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) camps in Gaza which was running "peace camps" that were actually being used to "instill the culture of hatred and the ideas of destroying Israel amidst Palestinian children.
‘’It’s very hard to habituate and prepare the next generation for peace when they’re told that Jews are the descendents of pigs and monkeys and that the Jewish State has no right to exist, so I trust that you will make sure that these abuses of UN goals and UN funds does not continue."
Ban also met with Israeli Presidnet Shimon Peres and laid a wreath at the grave of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.