Palestinian issues

ROME, 28 February — As the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People continued today, experts highlighted the complex challenges of developing a self-sustaining economy under occupation and outlined programmes aimed at rebuilding the severely eroded Palestinian agriculture sector, ensuring high governance standards and generating donor support for reconstruction of Gaza.

ROME, 27 February — With cash-starved Palestinian institutions standing on “political quicksand”, and mounting tensions in the West Bank over settlement construction and the recent death of a Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the parties to refrain from actions that could undermine the prospects of reopening long-stalled peace negotiations.

ROME, 27 February — The situations that triggered humanitarian strife in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — severe restrictions on movement and constraints on livelihoods — were man-made: the consequence of Israel’s occupation, experts said today as the United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People held its first plenary session.

While the General Assembly’s recent decision to enhance the status of Palestine at the United Nations had “resonated deeply” within the Organization, international re-engagement would be meaningless without serious commitments by the parties concerned to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 6 December:

Sharing the deep “global frustration” that the two-State solution seemed ever more distant, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today that the cost of the continued stalemate rose with each passing day, serving as the “complex and wrenching backdrop” – historic and present-day – against which the Palestinians had decided to seek non-Member Observer State status in the General Assembly.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will hold a special meeting in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in North Lawn Building Conference Room 4 at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, 29 November 2012, in accordance with General Assembly resolution 32/40 B of 2 December 1977.

The Palestinian Rights Committee today approved by consensus four draft resolutions relating to the question of Palestine, as it considered the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly with regard to the current hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

The Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued the following statement today, 16 November:

Progress on Palestinian status at the United Nations would generate a “new dynamic in the peace process” and help safeguard the two-State solution, stressed the Palestinian Rights Committee this morning as it adopted its latest report and heard a briefing on plans to present a resolution to the General Assembly on the matter in the coming months.