The International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace concluded this evening with a firm endorsement of the special role of national parliaments and inter-parliamentary organizations in advancing the faltering peace process.

Parliamentarians’ contribution to Israeli-Palestinian peace could only be a quiet, modest, unpretentious, bottom-up approach based on informed, impartial, balanced and genuine engagement between parliamentarians of the world and Israeli-Palestinian parliamentarians, out of whose ranks emerged the national leaders and main actors responsible for the actual task of peace-finding and making, the Cyprus Meeting heard today.

Legislators from Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, United States, United Kingdom and the Palestinian Legislative Council today considered prospects for re-starting the peace process in the wake of the military assault on Gaza, and their role in the new political landscape, as the United Nations International Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace continued.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today expressed its utmost concern about “illegal and provocative Israeli policies” and measures in Occupied East Jerusalem, including destruction of Palestinian homes and imposition of restrictions on movement, and reiterated that Israel must refrain from any activities that changed the legal, demographic and cultural character, and status of the area, “the capital of a future Palestinian State”.

The United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People will convene the United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine on 8 and 9 June 2009 at the Hotel Borobudur in Jakarta. The theme of the Meeting is “Strengthening international consensus on the urgency of achieving a two-State solution”. It will be followed, on 10 June 2009, by the United Nations Public Forum in Support of the Palestinian People.

“Our shared challenge is to begin implementing transformative changes on the ground and to create irreversible momentum towards an Israeli-Palestinian agreement,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today in a statement at the opening of the United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine.

The United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine this afternoon heard presentations of four experts, including Israeli and Palestinian, on the theme “International efforts aimed at achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the question of Palestine”.

The United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine addressed the complex question of Jerusalem this morning, with experts warning that unless the issue was addressed immediately, a two-State solution would be impossible.

The United Nations Asian and Pacific Meeting on the Question of Palestine came to a close today with a statement in strong support of the two-State solution: Israel and Palestinian, living side by side in peace and security.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations, as well as students and others attending today’s United Nations Public Forum in Support of the Palestinian People, discussed ways in which civil society could promote greater solidarity with the Palestinian people, and how they could join forces in backing a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while stressing that a two-State solution was the only way.