New York: Negotiations to resolve the West Asia crisis cannot resume until Israel stops its Jewish settlements and other activities in East Jerusalem, a top Palestinian envoy to the UN has said, warning of a possible religious war.
The Ambassador of the Palestinian Authority, Riyad Mansour, also slammed the Israeli authorities for taking away identity cards of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.
"This is in the process of trying to make East Jerusalem a complete Jewish town. Not in the history of Jerusalem, as we know it, in which Jerusalem was exclusively a city of one religion," Mansour told journalists here yesterday, noting that 5,000 Palestinians lost their identity cards in 2008.
"What the extremist settlers and the Israeli government is doing is pushing the situation in Jerusalem into an area where we don`t know where it will take us...a dangerous area with the possibility of a religious war," he said.
Approximately 500,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem and in occupied area of West Bank among more than two million Palestinians.
Earlier this month, Israeli officials approved the construction of more buildings near a Jewish seminary in East Jerusalem, and in December the government announced plans to build 700 new houses in areas of the West Bank.
Peace talks have been suspended as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to speak with Israel unless it halts all settlement activities according to the 2003 Road Map.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the future capital of West Bank and Gaza strip under the two state solution but many settlers see West Bank as the land given by God to the Jews.
Mansour was speaking after a meeting with Arab ambassadors at the United Nations and next week, the Palestinian Observer Mission at the UN will meet with Organisation of Islamic Conferences and the president of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) on flailing peace process in the Middle East.
"We want to succeed in negotiations and you cannot succeed unless Israel abides by international law and its obligations under the Road Map meaning they cannot create one hundred new condition every day and one hundred new realities in Jerusalem," Mansour said.
"If they want us to succeed in a possible negotiation in the future they have to act as an occupying power to stop all these things and go along with the global consensus," he added.
PTI
