Ramallah: Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye has called for immediate international action to protect the two-state solution from “Israel’s sabotage”.
He made the remarks at a meeting with European Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process Sven Koopmans in the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to a statement by the Prime Minister’s office released on Wednesday.
“There is an urgent need to move immediately to protect the two-state solution at a time when the Israeli government is working to push the Palestinian Authority to collapse and destroy the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state,” Ishtaye was quoted by the statement as saying.
He accused the government under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging the two-state solution “by promoting Israeli settlements, seizing land and continuing incursions into cities, and controlling crossings and natural resources”.
Koopmans, for his part, briefed Ishtaye on his efforts to revive the Arab Peace Initiative as a basis for a permanent solution involving various international parties, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Arab Peace Initiative was launched in 2002 after it was formulated by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the Arab League. It stipulates normalising relations with Israel after its withdrawal from the Arab and Palestinian lands it occupied in 1967.
Ishtaye praised “the constructive” efforts led by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to revive the stalled peace process.
“The EU and Palestine stand together for peace and justice toward ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” he said.
Koopmans also met with other senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank, including Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee Hussein Al-Sheikh.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Prime Minister called on Europe to take “serious measures … to ban the shipment of the Israeli settlement’s products to the markets of the European countries”.
The Palestinians want to establish an independent state alongside Israel on all the Palestinian lands Israel occupied in 1967.
The last rounds of peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis started in 2013 but broke down in 2014.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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