RAMALLAH - Although the international community was engrossed in pushing forward to resuming direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which has been stalled for one year, gaps between the two sides remain large and a peace agreement is still hard to be reached.

The Palestinian bid at the United Nations Security Council for a full membership of a statehood, which was strongly opposed by the United States and Israel, has contributed, to a large extent, to widening the gaps between the two sides and mounting the doubts of going back to the negotiation table.

Israel and the Palestinians had repeatedly declared their commitment to resuming the peace talks in a bid to resolve their six-decade conflicts. However, the mechanism of achieving this "is still stuck amid a failure of the world's diplomacy to resume it."

Trust on quartet declines

Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent member of Palestine Liberation Organization, said the Quartet is facing "a real test and it has to carry out active and tangible steps to give the political process credibility in order to achieve the two-state solution and establish the Palestinian state."

Abdul Majid Sweilem, a Gaza-based political analyst, said that "Palestinian observers and officials almost agree that in this stage, the Quartet is living its final days amid its failure to help achieve peace in the Middle East."

Representatives from the International Quartet for the Mideast peace will convene in Brussels on Sunday, after it declared an initiative on September 23 on resuming the stalled peace talks unconditionally within four weeks and reaching a permanent peace agreement within one year.

Israel said it accepts with reservations the Quartet's initiative without stopping settlement and said the talks can be resumed in accordance to Israel's security considerations, while the Palestinians insisted that talks can be resume only if Israel stops settlement and accepts a statehood on 1967 territories.

Peace is needed

On Thursday, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the European Union Council in Strasbourg that "peace and settlements are contradicting," adding that peace will bring about security rather than the military mighty or the geographical expansion.

"Peace can be restored only through understanding," the president said.

The international parties tried to obstruct the Palestinian bid at the UN by calling for resuming the peace talks. However, they failed due to the large differences between the two sides.

The direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were halted one year ago, just four weeks after it was launched in Washington. The Palestinians suspended the talks after Israel refused to freeze construction of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Samih Shbaib, a West Bank-based political analyst, said that Israel's insistence not to halt settlement building, even partially, "is still the major obstacle" for resuming peace talks.

"Resuming direct peace talks is unattainable amid the current positions of the two sides. Any dramatic change would be linked to changes in the political infrastructure of one of the two sides, mainly Israel," said Shbaib.