Kerry to call for revived peace talks at Cairo conference . US Secretary of State John Kerry will call for a revival of the collapsed Israeli-Palestinian peace process on Sunday when he attends an international conference in Cairo on rebuilding Gaza, American officials said. The top US diplomat and 30 of his counterparts convene in the Egyptian capital alongside UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is seeking a record $1.6 billion in aid to rebuild the battered Gaza Strip. The Palestinian government last week unveiled a 76-page reconstruction plan for Gaza, calling for $4 billion to rebuild the war-battered territory, with the largest amount going to build housing for some 100,000 left homeless. The Israeli military operation in Gaza killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were civilians, while attacks by Gaza militants killed 73 on the Israeli side, overwhelmingly soldiers. Kerry will meet with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the conference, having last met at the UN General Assembly in September, State Department officials said. You will hear the secretary reaffirm the commitment of the United States to helping the parties achieve a negotiated two-state solution and our willingness to re-engage in the negotiations and help facilitate successful negotiations, a State Department official said. More broadly we are interested in sort of breaking the cycle we have been in in the last six years of war and reconstruction there, the official added. Kerry was the architect of a high-profile bid to re-start negotiations, which collapsed in April and were followed by the devastating 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza, the third offensive against the enclave in six years. Direct negotiations began in July 2013 between Israel and the Palestinians in a US-led attempt to restart the deadlocked peace process. Over the course of the talks, Israel announced plans to build thousands of homes in illegal settlements across the West Bank, inhibiting US efforts and sparking global outrage. The Palestinian negotiating team resigned in protest against continued Israeli settlement construction in mid-November, dealing a major blow to negotiations between Israel and the PLO that had already been stalled. Negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh told AFP at the time that they resigned in response to increasing settlement building (by Israel) and the absence of any hope of achieving results, following Netanyahus announcement that Israel would build 20,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank. Palestinian critics have charged that peace negotiations are used by Israel as a cover for continued settlement building and military occupation, highlighting that the number of settler units under construction increases during negotiations while violence against Palestinians remains steady. The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 08:32:17 +0000
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