UN chief to arrive in Israel amid peace push, Turkey deal

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to arrive in Israel on Monday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, amid a push for peace promoted by the European Union and a Turkey-Israel reconciliation deal.

The UN chief will meet on Monday with President Reuven Rivlin for talks and will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. The Israeli leader is currently in Rome on an official visit where he is scheduled to unveil later Monday the full terms of an agreement to restore ties with Turkey, after six years of frayed relations. Netanyahu also met with US Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday night to discuss a French initiative to jumpstart talks, among other issues, and is scheduled to meet him again Monday.

Ban will also visit Ramallah on Tuesday to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and is set to pay a special visit to the Gaza Strip in order to inspect from up close UN agencies’ aid work in the coastal territory.

The visit comes amid renewed international diplomatic efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks stalled since 2014.

A top European official said last week that the EU stands ready to provide Israel and the Palestinians with massive political, economic and security support as part of any peace agreement between them.

The EU’s 28 foreign ministers last week endorsed France’s plan to hold an international peace conference in Paris to advance the stalled peace process. Israel has repeatedly rejected the French initiative, arguing that it hardens Palestinian negotiating positions and thus distances peace.

Israel went so far as to blast the peace push as “colonial.”

“When I look at the sequence of the EU implementing labeling [for settlement products] and now the endorsement of an international conference, I feel that those are the ghosts of a colonial European past coming back to life,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel last week.