Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement on Tuesday said it rejects settling Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a Palestinian statehood alongside the Jewish one.

"This solution poses a threat to the Palestinian cause and president Mahmoud Abbas should not accept it," said Khaled al-Batsh, a Gaza-based leader of the less-influential group.

One of the Islamic Jihad movement's principles is to destroy Israel and declare a Palestinian statehood in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jerusalem and all the land Israel captured before 1948.

For the movement, the two-state solution "serves Israel more than the Palestinian people and the problem is that the Palestinian National Authority accepts it," al-Batsh said in a statement faxed to the media.

Al-Batsh remarks came in response to an increasing US pressure on Israel to recognize the two-state solution.

US President Barack Obama told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 18 to freeze all settlement construction, including the "natural growth" of existing ones.

But the call fell on deaf ears of the hawkish leader, who has never paid lip service to the two-state plan since taking office in late March.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has also called on Netanyahu to obligate his right-wing government to accept the two-state solution.

The Iranian-backed Jihad often claims responsibility for firing rockets against Israel from the Gaza Strip which is controlled by Hamas movement.

(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2009)