Speaking today at a ceremony celebrating the 50-year anniversary of Israel's military conquest of the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would always retain full military control over the Jordan Valley irrespective of any future deals with the Palestinians.
In a statement released to media Monday night, Guterres referred to the "displacement" of hundreds of thousands of "Palestinians and Syrians" but focused on what he said was a heavy humanitarian and development burden on "the Palestinian people".
Among them are generation after generation of Palestinians who have been compelled to grow-up and live in ever more crowded refugee camps, many in abject poverty, and with little or no prospect of a better life for their children, he added. Only then "real progress can be made towards peace".
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized Guterres's "incomplete and misleading" comments, saying the Six-Day War anniversary "cannot be viewed in a vacuum".
Retired Justice Karnan arrested in Coimbatore
His plea for review was declined on technical grounds without its coming before the seven judges bench. According to reports reaching here, the former judge will be brought here and then taken to Kolkatta.
He says the occupation fuels "recurring cycles of violence and retribution", sending a message to Palestinians that statehood is just a dream and to Israelis that peace and regional recognition remain "unattainable".
"Now is not the time to give up on this goal". He blamed Israel's "continued settlement construction", as well as the Palestinians' "violence and incitement" and "illicit arms buildup and militant activity in Gaza", for advancing "a one-state reality that is incompatible with realizing the legitimate national and historic aspirations of both peoples".
On this fiftieth year of the occupation, we at Americans for Peace Now are committing to redouble our efforts to demonstrate that the conflict absolutely can be resolved, that it must be resolved, and that reaching and implementing a negotiated political agreement to settle the conflict is a principal responsibility of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and of worldwide stakeholders, led by the United States. Nineteen years earlier, in 1948, the state of Israel came into being in a violent process that entailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Within 20 years of being recognised as an independent state, Israel began an occupation that would become the longest in modern history, at 50 years and counting.
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