UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon discussed with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the efforts of the Quartet to start direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“They discussed the role of the Quartet in the peace process,” Ban’s office said. "The secretary-general briefed secretary Clinton on his recent conversations with leaders in the region.”
Mr Ban spoke to Clinton on the phone from Japan where he is visiting to honour the victims of the atomic bombing 65 years ago. The Quartet, which is made up of the United Nations, Russia, Europe and the US, has stressed that proximity talks should evolve into direct negotiations between the parties as soon as possible.
The goal is to resolve all issues within 24 months. The proximity talks have not yielded any results and now the US is pushing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to enter into direct talks with Israel. The Arab League has also signalled its support for direct talks.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza, however, and the illegal settlement building in the occupied territories is a potent source of tension. Last week, armed Israeli settlers forcibly evicted of nine families from a building in an Arab neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.
The UN also reported, last week, that the Israeli authorities destroyed a number of Palestinian commercial structures on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. Palestinians consider East Jerusalem as the future capital of their independent state under the two state solution but many settlers see it as the land given by God to the Jews.
Mr Abbas insists that direct negotiations are only possible if Israel agreed to a complete settlement freeze and provided a clearer picture on what the borders of a new Palestinian state would look like.
US President Barack Obama recently sent a letter to Mr Abbas urging him to enter into direct talks. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Nentanyahu is calling for direct talks without any preconditions.
Israel has eased the blockade of the Gaza Strip following the international condemnation of the deadly raid by its forces of an aid carrying flotilla that killed nine Turkish activists in May.
Israel has also agreed to an international inquiry organised by the UN into the incident. The inquiry is not a criminal investigation but it will only review the findings of the domestic probes being conducted Israel and Turkey.
The UN secretary-general will attend the Peace Memorial Ceremony on the anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on Friday -— the first UN secretary-general to do so.