UN delegation on Palestine to visit India to seek support on resolution of conflict

Jerusalem, March 2

A UN delegation on Palestine will visit New Delhi to seek India’s political and diplomatic support for a peaceful resolution to the long-standing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

India, which shares good relations with both Palestine and Israel, believes in a two-state solution in which both Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist peacefully.

The two-state solution envisions independent Israeli and Palestinian states coexisting side by side peacefully. The Palestinians see East Jerusalem as their future capital.

The delegation of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) will meet External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and senior officials in the ministry, as well as political leaders and think-tanks during the two-day visit from Monday.

The delegation intended to engage India in looking for ways how it could play a more proactive role in the settling of the question of Palestine, an official statement said.

The visit would also focus to enhance the coordination of the Committee Bureau and India on capacity building projects for Palestine, including within the context of South-South and Triangular Cooperation, it said.

The focus of the visit is on enhancing the political and diplomatic support of India for a peaceful solution of the question of Palestine and engaging Indian counterparts on synergies in capacity building for staff and institutions of Palestine, the statement said.

The delegation will include UN ambassadors and representatives of Senegal (Committee Chair); Indonesia and Malaysia (Committee Members); and the State of Palestine (Committee Observer).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Israel in July 2017 to commemorate 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, becoming the first Indian premier to do so.

During his visit to Israel, Modi did not travel to Ramallah. His standalone visit to Israel had led many analysts to question the future of the Indo-Palestine ties.

In February 2018, Modi made a historic visit to Palestine and skipped Israel, in a clear message that India is de-hyphenating its ties with Israel and Palestine.

The CEIRPP was founded on November 10, 1975 by the United Nations General Assembly in order to formulate a programme to enable the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination, to national independence and sovereignty, and the right of Palestine refugees to return. PTI