RAMALLAH, March 9, 2017 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday told a delegation from the Jewish reform movement in the United States that Israel’s persistence in settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem obstructs peace efforts.

“Israel’s persistence in settlement construction as well as its policy of killing, home demolitions, detentions and raids obstructs initiating a serious peace process leading to an end to the Israeli occupation,” he told the delegation from the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) who met him at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

Abbas affirmed to his guests the Palestinian leadership’s commitment to achieving a comprehensive and just peace based on relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative in order to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The URJ delegation stressed their full support to the two-state solution to the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict and justice to the Palestinian people through Palestinian statehood.

They slammed Israeli settlement construction as an obstacle to the peace process.

K.F./M.K.