Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said during a meeting with a delegation of people with disabilities, that he is willing to sit at the negotiating table with the Israeli leadership, in a renewed effort to advance a two state solution. The Palestinian leader stressed that the basis for all negotiations with the Israelis would be the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, which Israel captured from Jordan during the six-day war, with East Jerusalem as its capital. President Abbas stressed that without east Jerusalem, which he referred to as the crown of all Palestinians, no final solution would be implemented.
President Mahmoud Abbas stressed that the Palestinian people want to achieve their rights through a peaceful popular resistance. He noted that considering the fact that Palestine was recognized by the United Nations as a non-member observer state, it gave the Palestinians the ability to achieve recognition from international bodies, one-step-at-a-time.
Abbas also reiterated his demand that Israel must stop its construction policy on lands the Palestinians want for their future state, a demand he said was acknowledged all over the world. In Response Abbas’s remarks, a source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told TV7 that Israel maintains its position, in which it is willing to meet with the Palestinian leadership at any time and any place for direct negotiations without pre-conditions. The source noted, that if Abbas was indeed serious, the Israeli leader would be willing to visit the West Bank city of Ramallah tomorrow and resume a process that would bring about a viable solution between Israel and the Palestinians.