At UN Netanyahu invites Abbas to address Knesset

Officials in the United Nations have also said that the Israeli settlement expansion has surged in the past two months.

“For the first time in my lifetime, many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy, they recognize that Israel is their ally”, he said.

“Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel”, he said on Tuesday.

Following his speech, the president held a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in NY on Wednesday.

Speaking after Abbas, who said that the Palestinians intend to submit a Security Council resolution against Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu stated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not and never has been about settlements.

Hanegbi said there had been an “improvement” in Obama’s stance towards the Jewish State in his second term, however he was “not acting as the world’s strongest man, but as an employee of the Clinton campaign”, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“We ask Great Britain, as we approach 100 years since this infamous declaration, to draw the necessary lessons and to bear its historic, legal, political, material and moral responsibility for the consequences of this declaration, including an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created and to act to rectify these disasters and remedy its consequences, including by the recognition of the state of Palestine”, president Abbas told the assembly. “The settlements are illegal in every aspect”.

Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, speaks during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016, at U.N. headquarters.

Previous year the United Nations raised for the first time the Palestinian flag – a symbolic gesture supported by the majority of UN members after the latest U.S. peace initiative collapsed in 2014.

Obama’s efforts to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement have failed over the almost eight years he has been in the White House, with the latest push by US Secretary of State John Kerry collapsing in 2014.

“We extend our hands to those who want to build peace”.

“It is Israel’s breach of the agreements it has signed and its failure to comply with the obligations that have led us to the deadlock and stalemate that we remain in now”.

Less than an hour later, it was the turn of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu to address the assembly.

The approvals mostly involved new housing units, but a retroactive green light was also granted to 179 existing homes in the Ofarim settlement, said the Peace Now organization.

The recent report by the diplomatic Quartet – the European Union, Russia, the UN and the United States – said construction of settlements on land earmarked to be part of a future Palestinian state is eroding the possibility of a two-state solution.