Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the foreign ministers of the European Union, who will receive him in two weeks, to work with their governments to recognize a Palestinian state within the “1967 borders” and East Jerusalem as its capital, Palestinian political sources said on Sunday.
Abbas will meet with European foreign ministers on January 22 in Brussels at the invitation of the EU. The invitation comes in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who imposed himself to a meeting with the Union at the end of December, a move that was not appreciated by the EU countries, which immediately asked Abbas for a desirable meeting.
Sources close to Abu Mazen said that US President Donald Trump was working with Israel “to bury the two-state solution.”
“If Europe wants to continue to support this solution, it must move from declaration to action,” the sources said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, mainly Fatah Movement, is pushing for continued popular protests throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that broke out with the US announcement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Fatah published a statement calling on the people to take to the streets on Tuesday and participate in mass prayers on Friday and not to silence the protests, at least every Tuesday and Friday.
A senior Palestinian official said that Palestinians should work to keep the Palestinian Cause on the international agenda. He added that the Palestinian Central Council, which will convene in Ramallah in the presence of all factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad next week, would decide on the next steps to be taken in response to the US announcement on Jerusalem.
In Israel, the Israeli army issued statistics on Sunday summarizing the events of the confrontations with the Palestinians in 2017 compared to the previous year.
The statistics showed that 20 Israelis were killed in “terrorist attacks” over the past year, or three persons more than those killed in 2016. They added that the number of operations had declined from 269 to 99.
