And in that day I will make Yerusalem a burdensome stone for all peoples; all who burden themselves with it will be cut to pieces, though all the peoples of the earth are gathered against it."
Zechariah 12:2-3
"And the sixth Angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden alter which is before Yahweh,
Saying to the sixth Angel which had the trumpet: Loose the four Angels who are bound in the great river Euphrates!
And the four Angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, in order to slay the third part of men.
And the number of the army was two hundred thousand thousand: for I heard the number of them."
Revelation 9:13-16
Mideast peacemakers ‘condemn’ East Jerusalem building plan
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other members of the Quartet meet in Moscow on Friday.
msnbc.com news services
updated 2 hours ago
MOSCOW - The so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators called on Israel to freeze all settlement activities and denounced Israel's aim to build new housing in East Jerusalem Friday.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon read a joint statement by the members — Russia, the United States, the U.N. and the European Union — following a meeting of the group in Moscow.
"The Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activities ... and to refrain from demolitions and evictions," said the statement read by Ban.
It "condemns the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem."
Those plans this month caused prospects for indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks to collapse and prompted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is in Moscow for the talks, to strongly criticize Israel.
Friday's formal Quartet meeting involved Clinton, her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Ban, E.U. foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Quartet Representative Tony Blair, who also shared a closed dinner Thursday evening.
Israel unveiled the plans for 1,600 new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as the capital of their future state, during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden last week.
The Palestinians say they will not go ahead with indirect peace talks unless the housing scheme is scrapped.
The Quartet said that all parties should promote those talks as part of moves toward establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank within 24 months.
But the mediators did not say how they could ensure their calls, which have gone unheeded in the past, would be respected.
Hours before the Quartet met, Israeli aircraft struck at least six targets in the Gaza Strip in response to deadly rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory the previous day, which killed a Thai worker in Israel.
'Deeply concerned'
The Quartet statement condemned the rocket fire from Gaza and called for an "immediate end to violence and terror."
But it added: "The Quartet is deeply concerned by the continuing deterioration in Gaza, including the humanitarian and human rights situation of the civilian population and stresses the urgency of a resolution to the Gaza crisis."
Ban said he would travel from the Moscow meeting to Gaza on Sunday to see the situation on the ground there for himself.
Clinton discussed steps to improve the outlook for Israeli-Palestinian peace by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, after U.S. sources suggested he was refusing to respond to her request to call him.
Netanyahu's spokesman Nir Chefetz said the Israeli leader had proposed some "mutual confidence-building steps" that both Israel and the Palestinians could take in the West Bank. He declined to spell these out.
Clinton said Netanyahu had given a "useful and productive" response to her concerns on the settlement issue during a telephone conversation on Thursday, but similarly did not give details.
The Quartet was formed in 2002 in Spain to assist in mediating an end to escalating violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It last met on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in September.
But its results so far have been meager, leading some analysts to dismiss it as an expensive club for diplomats.
Moscow had originally hoped to organize a full-scale international conference on the Middle East this year, but the lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks has forced Russia to settle instead for hosting a Quartet meeting.
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