EU foreign policy chief meets PM, urges renewed peace talks

NEW YORK — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini Wednesday evening in New York to discuss the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Although the meeting was not included on Netanyahu’s public schedule, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed the meeting shortly before the sit-down started and said that it was planned in advance.

Mogherini announced the meeting after a lengthy gathering of the Middle East Quartet at the United Nations Security Council. Following the Quartet’s session, the EU foreign policy chief pushed for a renewed effort to restart talks between the two parties and suggested a multilateral framework such as the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative would be a possible way forward.

Mogherini said she would discuss this topic with Netanyahu during their conversation Wednesday evening.

Mogherini responded in her comments to Wednesday’s speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that his remarks conveyed urgency.

Mogherini said she listened “very carefully” to the speech, and that the Palestinian leader had told her about his intentions two days earlier.

“I interpreted his words as a scenario that is going to happen if — and there is an if. Now on that ‘if’ we will have to work,” she said, suggesting that his words were a warning rather than an ultimatum, albeit one “telling the urgency of the international and regional community to engage.”

The European foreign policy chief called on the Israeli leadership to take “concrete steps on the ground to implement agreements that are already there” and called on the Palestinian leadership “to engage in national reconciliation and direct negotiations.”

Abbas’s speech, she emphasized, was “an alarm.”

“It’s a serious one, and I think all of the world, from East Asia to Latin America, looks at this because it has a strong symbolic power for everybody,” she said, stressing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “not something unrelated” to the fight against Islamic terrorism.

She emphasized that the recent unrest in Jerusalem increased the sense of urgency to work towards a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, warning that failure to do so could engender increased radicalization. She noted that “a regional security framework can be extremely useful and interesting” for all of the parties involved in an effort to prevent a “dramatic” conflagration.

“If we don’t act, if the leaders on the ground don’t act, this can be a major source of radicalization worldwide, There is an urgency and there is an international effort to encourage support.”

“What has already been agreed can be implemented. Just do it,” she added.

Although in his speech Abbas warned that the Palestinian Authority would cease to honor all prior agreements made with Israel, Mogherini emphasized that the “most viable if not only viable way” to move forward “is to focus on concrete steps on the ground, in particular on encouraging the parties to start implementing already signed agreements.

“This can be a very important step in the right direction to preserve the opportunity for two states and start rebuilding trust and confidence both in Israel and in Palestine, in the other parties and [in] the process itself.”