Burkhalter said an end to settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was necessary to create a conducive environment for negotiations
(Keystone)
At the Paris peace conference on Sunday, Didier Burkhalter called upon Israel to promote the flow of goods and people between Gaza, Israel and the West Bank as a means to promote peace in the region.
Burkhalter participated in an international conference on the near east in Paris that was attended by 70 foreign ministers and representatives of organisations like the UN, the EU and the Arab League. However, no representatives from either Israel or Palestine were present.
“It is by fighting unemployment that affects 50% of the people in Gaza that we can reconstruct prospects,” said Burkhalter in a statement released on Sunday. He also called upon Palestinians to strengthen the democratic space and confidence in institutions and “not only wait for local and general elections”.
The foreign minister also reiterated the need for both countries to rebuild confidence in each other and work to promote a two state solution. He spoke frankly of the conditions needed to achieve this. For Israel “it is a question of ending its pursuit of settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem” while Palestinian leaders could restart the peace process by “taking a firm stand against incitement to violence”, he said.
swissinfo.ch/a.c
Neuer Inhalt
Horizontal Line
subscription form
Form for signing up for free newsletter.
Sign up for our free newsletters and get the top stories delivered to your inbox.
All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.
As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.