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Two-state solution necessary for Mideast peace: Arab League chief

Xinhua, February 16, 2017 Adjust font size:

The two-state solution is required to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and achieve peace in the Middle East region, said Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit in a statement Thursday.

Aboul-Gheit remarks came after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the AL headquarters in Cairo and one day after U.S. President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

The AL chief reiterated the Arab position demanding the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital city.

He added that the AL will face Israel's efforts to get a UN Security Council (UNSC) non-permanent seat and also rejected Trump's promise as a presidential candidate to move the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would cause explosion to the conditions in the Middle East," Aboul-Gheit said in the statement.

Israel is blamed by the international community for the deadlock of the peace process due to its settlement expansion policy that is rejected even by its strongest ally, the United States.

Despite a late 2016 UNSC resolution demanding immediate and complete halt of Israeli settlement activities on occupied Palestinian territories, the Israeli parliament approved in February the so-called "Regulation Bill" that retroactively legalizes about 3,850 housing units in dozens of outposts built illegally on privately owned Palestinian lands.

Newly-appointed UN chief Guterres said on Wednesday in Cairo, the last destination of his first regional tour that included Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, that "there is no plan B for the two-state solution," referring to the Palestinian-Israeli issue as "the mother" of the regional conflicts. Endit