US Secretary of State John Kerry has cancelled a planned trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah after Israel announced plans to build more illegal houses on the occupied Palestinian land.
“We are no longer travelling tomorrow,” a senior US State Department official said on Tuesday.
Kerry was expected to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the acting Palestinian Authority (PA) chief, on Wednesday.
Late on Monday, Kerry landed in Israel on an apparently unscheduled trip and held more than four hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Tuesday, he returned to Brussels to attend a NATO summit there. Kerry told a press conference in Brussels that he was not sure yet whether he would return to the Middle East.
“My team is on the ground meeting with the parties even tonight,” the top US diplomat said.
Asked if he was going back to Israel and the region, he replied, “I’m not sure I’m going…. We have certain things we are trying to figure out in terms of the logistics on the ground and what is possible.”
The cancellation came after the regime in Tel Aviv announced new tenders for illegal settlement units in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Israel has also refused to release the last group of Palestinian prisoners from its jails. The release had been agreed as part of efforts to resume peace talks after a three-year break.
The prisoners were scheduled to get released on March 29, but Israel backtracked on the issue. The US is struggling to extend the April 29 deadline for the resumption of the talks with Palestinian officials saying that if the prisoners are not released, there will be no extension.
Israel has recently freed dozens of Palestinian prisoners, as part of a deal for the resumption of the talks with the PA, but it has also announced plans to build thousands of more illegal settlement units on the occupied Palestinian land.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly said that there will be no direct talks with Israel if Tel Aviv keeps on expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.
GJH/GJH
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