US President Donald Trump has invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to visit the White House, reports say.
The invitation was extended to Abbas by Trump during their first phone conversation on Friday since the US president’s inauguration on January 20, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Trump invited the Palestinian leader "to visit the White House soon to discuss ways to resume the (Palestinian-Israeli) political process," Abbas's spokesman was quoted as saying.
Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said that Trump emphaiszed his "commitment to a peace process that would lead to a real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”
On his turn, Abbas told Trump that peace was a "strategic choice" for Palestinians that should lead to the "establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” according to Wafa.
In mid-February, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
At that meeting, Trump said he would not pursue decades of American policy in favor of the so-called two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And, Netanyahu went on to describe Trump as the greatest supporter of the Tel Aviv regime.
During a joint press conference with US President Donald Trump at the White House, Netanyahu said there was "no greater supporter of" Israel and Israelis "than President Donald Trump."
"Let us seize this moment" to further the Israeli agenda in the Middle East, Netanyahu told Trump.
In his remarks, the US president supported the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds. Trump, however, said Washington was "looking at it with great care."
Trump also responded to a question about his position on Israeli settlements. He urged Netanyahu to "hold back on settlements for a little bit."
According to American author Ralph Schoenman, the two-state solution that the US Democrats and Republicans have pursued over the years is “totally fraudulent.”
Schoenman told Press TV that the statement by Trump that “he is not insisting upon a two-state solution and is prepared to accommodate himself to Netanyahu’s determination to abandon and reject the possibility of a two-state solution, is essentially an embrace of an agenda on the part of both Israel and the United States of an escalated conflict in the region.”
Over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem al-Quds.
The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle to the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.
The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinians state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
Posts
