\n EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said the situation in the Israel-occupied West Bank posed a major obstacle to finding a long-term solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The West Bank is the real obstacle for the two-state solution,\" Borrell said at the Munich Security Conference.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The West Bank is at boiling... we could be on the eve of a greater explosion,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 490,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, in dozens of settlements that are deemed illegal under international law.\n<\/p>\n
\n The settlers live alongside around three million Palestinians in the territory.\n<\/p>\n
\n Palestinians view the Israeli settlements as a war crime and a major obstacle to peace, but many national-religious hardliners see living there as fulfilling a divine promise.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, the number of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the West Bank has increased.\n<\/p>\n
\n Borrell said the EU needed to \"support the Arab initiative\" to establish a Palestinian state, including both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.\n<\/p>\n
\n Borrell's comments come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a plan for international recognition of such a state, following reports of such an initiative in The Washington Post.\n<\/p>\n
\n The US newspaper reported that US President Joe Biden's administration and a small group of Arab nations were working out a comprehensive plan for long-term peace between Israel and the Palestinians.\n<\/p>\n
\n It included a firm timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the report said.\n<\/p>\n
\n A question mark remained over who would lead a post-war Palestinian state. The US has pinned its hopes on a reformed Palestinian Authority to be a better partner for Israel.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Palestinian Authority, which holds limited authority in the West Bank, is led by Mahmud Abbas and his party Fatah.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gaza has had its own separate administration run by Hamas since 2007 when Abbas loyalists were ousted from the territory.\n<\/p>\n
\n Speaking at the Munich conference, the Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Palestinian Authority \"(does) not have a partner in Israel\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We need to move from talking about two states to implementation of two states,\" Shtayyeh said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Gaza war began with Hamas's October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.\n<\/p>\n
\n Militants also took about 250 people hostage, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 who are presumed dead, according to Israeli figures.\n<\/p>\n
\n Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 28,985 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Sunday said the situation in the Israel-occupied West Bank posed a major obstacle to finding a long-term solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. \"The West Bank is the real obstacle for the two-state solution,\" Borrell said at the Munich Security Conference. \"The West Bank is at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-128565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n