PA calls for European recognition of ‘Palestine’

Mohammad Shtayyeh, the new leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet, on Wednesday called on European countries to hurry up and recognize the “state of Palestine” within the 1967 borders.

In a meeting with the Swiss ambassador to the PA, Shtayyeh said that the European recognition of the “state of Palestine” would save the two-state solution as Israel seeks to annex parts of Judea and Samaria.

Shtayyeh stressed that the Palestinians would not cave to the economic pressures exerted by the US and Israel on the Palestinian Authority in order to force them to accept the Trump administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century”.

He further said the Arab powers and countries should work to establish a joint international working group that would sponsor the peace process and oppose the Trump peace plan.

Shtayyeh also stressed that the status quo could not be accepted because Israel had avoided implementing all the agreements signed with it, and is implementing a policy of blackmail against the Palestinians.

On Tuesday, in an interview with The Associated Press, the PA cabinet leader said the US administration’s peace plan will be “born dead”.

“There are no partners in Palestine for Trump. There are no Arab partners for Trump and there are no European partners for Trump,” Shtayyeh declared.

The PA, which has been boycotting the US ever since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December of 2017, has rejected the US peace plan before it has even been unveiled.

The PA has been seeking to bypass peace talks with Israel by having other countries unilaterally recognize a Palestinian Staet. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas met EU foreign ministers in Brussels last year and asked them to recognize a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 territories with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.