MUNICH
\nEU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said the situation in the Israel-occupied West Bank posed a major obstacle to finding a long-term solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
\n\u201cThe West Bank is the real obstacle for the two-state solution,\u201d Borrell said at the Munich Security Conference. \u201cThe West Bank is at boiling\u2026 we could be on the eve of a greater explosion,\u201d he said.
\nAround 490,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, in dozens of settlements that are deemed illegal under international law.
\nThe settlers live alongside around three million Palestinians in the territory.
\nPalestinians view the Israeli settlements as a war crime and a major obstacle to peace, but many national-religious hardliners see living there as fulfilling a divine promise.
\nSince the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, the number of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the West Bank has increased. Borrell said the EU needed to \u201csupport the Arab initiative\u201d to establish a Palestinian state, including both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
\nBorrell\u2019s comments come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a plan for international recognition of such a state, following reports of such an initiative in The Washington Post.
\nThe US newspaper reported that US President Joe Biden\u2019s administration and a small group of Arab nations were working out a comprehensive plan for long-term peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
\nIt included a firm timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the report said. A question mark remained over who would lead a post-war Palestinian state. The US has pinned its hopes on a reformed Palestinian Authority to be a better partner for Israel.
\nThe Palestinian Authority, which holds limited authority in the West Bank, is led by Mahmud Abbas and his party Fatah.
\nGaza has had its own separate administration run by Hamas since 2007 when Abbas loyalists were ousted from the territory. Speaking at the Munich conference, the Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Palestinian Authority \u201c(does) not have a partner in Israel\u201d.
\n\u201cWe need to move from talking about two states to implementation of two states,\u201d Shtayyeh said.
\nThe Gaza war began with Hamas\u2019s October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MUNICH EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said the situation in the Israel-occupied West Bank posed a major obstacle to finding a long-term solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. \u201cThe West Bank is the real obstacle for the two-state solution,\u201d Borrell said at the Munich Security Conference. \u201cThe West Bank is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-387962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n