UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday that proximity talks between Israel and Palestinians shouldn't be an alternative to direct negotiations, Xinhua reported
The indirect negotiations, proposed by the United States, is a step for the final, direct negotiations, Ban said at a joint news conference with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah.
He insisted that negotiations are the only way to resolve the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, adding that the discussions should lead to establishing a Palestinian statehood on the lands Israel occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
The negotiations stopped in December 2008 when Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip. The building of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the territories the Palestinians want for a future state, undermined efforts to revive the talks.
Last week, Israel approved the building of 1,600 new homes in the occupied East Jerusalem, hindering a fresh U.S. proposal to revive the peace talks between the two sides by holding proximity talks on the borders of the future state