For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the public has been missing the most central point of the conflict in the Middle East: Palestine's refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state.
"I think today everybody understands that the root cause of the instability in the Middle East and beyond has to do with the convulsion that is historic and cultural in nature of which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely one of many, many such manifestations," Netanyahu told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Ban met with Netanyahu on Friday after arriving in Israel the day before, according to Israeli news source the Jerusalem Post. The Secretary General paid Netanyahu a visit in support of recently re-launched peace talks between Israel and Palestine.
The UN secretary-general openly questioned Israel's settlement policy, which currently consists of plans to build more than 3,000 new apartments in areas of East Jerusalem, in what some are calling part of the "ethnic cleansing" movement aiming to get rid of Palestinians in Israel.
Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, where more than half a million Israelis live in settlements that some say were constructed illegally.
"I am deeply troubled by Israel's continuing settlement activity in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem," Ban stated during a press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "The settlement activity is deepening the Palestinian people's mistrust in the seriousness on the Israeli side towards achieving peace."
Ban also said building the settlements will make a two-state solution nearly impossible, Al-Jazeera reported.
Netanyahu responded by saying that the crux of the issue isn't the settlements, rather, it's Palestine's inability to acknowledge the Jewish state.
"It doesn't have to do with the settlements," the prime minister said. "This is not the reason that we have a continual conflict. The conflict preceded the establishment of a single settlement by half a century and when we rooted out all the settlements in Gaza, the attacks continued because of this basic opposition to the Jewish state."
He told Ban to look into camps in Gaza that were called "peace camps" but were, in fact, being operated to "instill the culture of hatred and the ideas of destroying Israel amidst Palestinian children."
Both leaders acknowledged the importance of using peace talks-the first organized negotiations in five years-to advance both Palestinian and Israel.
"I sincerely hope that both parties, Israelis and Palestinians, now they have just started very important peace negotiations, will...realize a two-state solution," Ban concluded.
