
File Photo: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah, AFP
He said Wednesday that the Palestinians are ready to work with the international community on a “serious political process” that leads to an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem, territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
He also again called for a halt to the war in Gaza.
Abbas’s Palestinian Authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hamas drove its forces out of Gaza when it seized power there in 2007.
The US has said a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority should govern Gaza and the West Bank as part of an eventual two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected that idea, and his government is strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
The last serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down more than a decade ago.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
Short link: