The US has urged Palestinians to give up resistance against Israel and instead turn to negotiations as talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Tel Aviv remain deadlocked.
"Negotiations are not easy, but they are absolutely necessary. It is always easier to defer decisions than it is to make them," said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, quoted by Reuters on Wednesday.
The remarks come amid a stalemate in direct US-sponsored talks between the PA and Israel over Tel Aviv’s refusal to renew a 10-month, partial moratorium on its settlement construction in the West Bank following its expiry on September 26.
Palestinians have been demanding a full and permanent halt to construction activity in the West Bank — particularly in the illegally annexed East al-Quds (Jerusalem) — arguing that the concept of a two-state solution will be meaningless if Israel continues to occupy the capital of their future state through settlement expansion.
"I cannot stand here today and tell you there is a magic formula that I have discovered that will break through the current impasse. But we are working every day to create the conditions for negotiations to continue and succeed," Clinton said at a banquet hosted by the American Task Force on Palestine.
Despite widespread opposition to the PA-Israeli talks throughout the Palestinian territories and fears of more concessions in favor of Tel Aviv, Clinton urged the Palestinian group to focus on what could be gained through negotiations, not what might be scarified.
"I know there are those who think that if they wait, scheme or fight long enough, they can avoid compromising or negotiating. But I am here to say that that is not the case. That will only guarantee more suffering, more sorrow, and more victims," she claimed.
Clinton said Israel should do more to relax its economic blockade on the Gaza Strip but, in return, called for public rejection of the resistance movements of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The US official also demanded that the Arab world do more than offer mere ‘lip service’ in financing the Ramallah-based PA.
"It takes more than words to support making the State of Palestine a reality," she concluded.
(Press TV)
