Timid steps not enough

It is commendable that Britain and France are urging the UN Security Council to decide on a “framework” for starting peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis after a very long hiatus that only brought despair among the Palestinians.

New Zealand, another member of the Security Council, wants to go one step further, calling for the adoption of a “parameter” for an eventual peace deal.

This is all good and fine, except that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly half a century old and one would expect the UN Security Council to be clear about what it intends to do.

The problem for the Palestinians is beyond the stages of parameters and frameworks.

A detailed plan for its settlement is overdue, taking into account the formal endorsement of the two-state solution with specific reference to the 1967 borders for the Palestinian state and East Jerusalem as its capital.

Anything short of that will only give more time to Israel to complete its schemes and theft of Palestinian land, and for it to further procrastinate.

As the UN was able, in 1947, to come up with a specific partition plan to give Israel land stolen from the Palestinians, it should be equally efficient and prompt in solving the Palestinian problem once and for all.

Surely the Security Council can, after half a century, come up with at least a specific outline that will settle the issue and end the only colonial occupation in this 21st century.

All sides know what it takes to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a close.

The sooner they put forward more specific ideas the sooner the conflict, and the Palestinians’ suffering with it, will end.