Ashraf AboArafe
Mr. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States (LAS), received today, the 16th of this month, Mr. Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, at the headquarters of the General Secretariat in Cairo.
Jamal Rushdi, the official spokesman for the Secretary-General, said that the meeting addressed developments in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the risks of the continuation of the aggressive war on the Gaza Strip on regional stability, especially in light of the Israeli voices calling for escalation on the southern Lebanon front.
The spokesman quoted Aboul Gheit as stressing that the tolerance of the major powers and the Western world for the continuation of this war for a whole year will have a heavy price on regional stability, stressing that the hatred that Israel sows by committing massacres hinders any horizon for comprehensive peace in the future, and contributes to undermining the stable peace structure in the region for more than four decades.
Rashdi explained that Abu Al-Gheit listened to the vision of the UN coordinator on how to preserve the framework of the two-state solution and the project of an independent Palestinian state, as the two sides agreed that humanitarian work, despite its great importance in the coming stage, must be accompanied by a political path that addresses the fundamental issue, which is the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The spokesman added that the meeting touched on the expected diplomatic steps in the coming period in order to move the two-state solution from the framework of rhetoric and intentions to the field of action and implementation, noting that Abu Al-Gheit stressed during the meeting that political work must continue in all forums, especially in the United Nations and the Security Council, in order to preserve the vision of the two states and embody it on the ground, and that expanding the scope of recognition of the Palestinian state represents an important step on this path because it paves the way for negotiations between two states on an equal footing and from a position of equality at the legal level.
