Israel, PA agree to postpone unilateral action under US pressure

Israel has reached an agree­ment with the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty (PA) to post­pone uni­lat­er­al actions for sev­er­al months to ease ten­sions in the West Bank dur­ing Ramadan, Israeli sources report. rice field.

Two Israeli sources famil­iar with the mat­ter said the agree­ment was reached under heavy pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, news web­site Wal­la reported.

The PA has report­ed­ly agreed to post­pone a motion to call a UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil vote on Israeli set­tle­ment expan­sion, which Wash­ing­ton wants to avoid a veto.

Instead, Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­bers are prepar­ing sym­bol­ic, non-bind­ing state­ments con­tain­ing con­dem­na­tion of both set­tle­ment build­ing and recent Pales­tin­ian attacks.

In return, Israel promised to delay approval of new con­struc­tion in the West Bank set­tle­ments for sev­er­al months, delay Pales­tin­ian evic­tions, and reduce the num­ber of Israeli raids on Pales­tin­ian towns.

Media reports said senior U.S. offi­cials con­firmed this under­stand­ing, but Israeli diplo­mat­ic sources denied any agree­ment had been reached and said plans to build all set­tle­ments over the next few months had already been approved last week. Says.

The Plan­ning Com­mis­sion is not sched­uled to meet again for the next three months.

The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates will vote Mon­day on a draft res­o­lu­tion call­ing on Israel to “imme­di­ate­ly and com­plete­ly cease all set­tle­ment activ­i­ties in the occu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries,” accord­ing to a memo seen by Reuters. informed that it will not ask for

In a memo, the UAE said it would instead work on draft­ing a for­mal state­ment known as the Pres­i­den­tial State­ment (PRST), which would require the con­sen­sus of all 15 mem­ber states.

“Fol­low­ing pos­i­tive dis­cus­sions between the par­ties, we are cur­rent­ly work­ing on a draft PRST to reach con­sen­sus,” it said. “There­fore, this res­o­lu­tion will not be vot­ed on Mon­day. Much of the PRST text will be tak­en from this resolution.”