NEW YORK, August 23, 2006 (WAFA) -The United Nations Under Secretary General for Political Affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, painted a grim picture of developments of the Palestinian situation over the past 12 months, warning that the vision of Israel and Palestine living peacefully side-by-side has slipped "further away."

Briefing the UN Security Council Tuesday on the situation of Palestinians in the Middle East, Gambari stressed the need for a renewed international effort in the region.

The meeting, which also heard speeches from almost 30 countries, listed six main reasons why the situation had changed so much from a year ago, when Israel was disengaging from Gaza and the world community was working to ensure both sides would return to the Road Map for the region.

Gambari revealed that the new Palestinian government has not fully committed itself to basic principles of the peace process, while Israel has itself failed to implement Road Map obligations, including freezing settlement activity.

He also highlighted the financial difficulties faced by the Palestinian Authority, but said that the "most terrible" measure of the state of the peace process was the death and destruction from violence, as he cited examples of the suffering on both sides.

"The cycle of attack and counter-attack leads only to increase human suffering which is intolerable on all sides… in the past year a total of 41 Israelis have been killed, and nearly 480 injured, by Palestinian violence. In the same period, over 450 Palestinians have been killed, and over 2,500 injured by Israeli violence," he added.

Gambari made it clear that no progress has been made in securing the release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, despite calls for his unconditional release, while efforts to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners have also been unsuccessful.

Another for the lack of progress towards a negotiated two State solution, said Mr. Gambari, was the fact that settlement activity continues and so too does the building of The Barrier (WaLL), large parts of which are on Occupied Palestinian Territory.

He pointed out that the high degree of poverty, noting that "impoverishment in the Palestinian territory is more severe now than it has ever been," but concluded by saying that perhaps the most worrying development of the past year was in the attitudes of ordinary people.

"Positions may be hardening, and could harden further unless a credible political process is somehow revived," he said, as he emphasised the importance of Security General Kofi Annan's recent call for greater global involvement and the need to look at peace in the whole Middle East region as a whole.

"There are many concrete steps, some immediate, which need to be taken in order to get out of the current crisis and back towards a political path. And as the Secretary-General stressed on 11 August, something more is needed - a renewed international effort, in which the various crises in the region are addressed… as part of a holistic and comprehensive effort, sanctioned and championed by this Council."

H.M. (21:28 P) (18:28 GMT)