RAMALLAH, March 16, 2017 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday welcomed current international and Arab efforts to advance comprehensive and just peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
“We welcome these efforts aimed to achieve comprehensive and just peace between us ]the Palestinians[ and the Israelis towards the realization of the two-state solution, Palestine and Israel, living side by side within secure, internationally recognized borders,” Abbas stated.
He made these remarks during a press conference with the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mladen Ivanic at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah.
He commended these efforts “supporting the Palestinian people it its quest to achieve freedom and independence based on relevant United Nations resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.”
Abbas said he was awaiting a date to be set for his visit to the White House following an official invitation from Trump and expressed hopes that Palestinian-US official meetings would eventually lead to a US-led peace.
Referring to the upcoming Arab League summit to be held in the Jordanian capital of Amman by the end of the month, Abbas said the summit would support Palestinian-Israeli peace based on the Arab Peace Initiative.
“Obviously, the world is completely convinced that neither could the events taking place around us and across the world nor the issue of terrorism be handled without solving the Palestinian question,” he stressed.
On his part, Ivanic expressed his country’s support for Palestinian people’s right to exist and the two-state solution.
He said following twenty years of conflict, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are living in peace, expressing his hopes that the Palestinian people would benefit from his country’s experience.
Meanwhile, Ivanic made a tour to the vicinity of Israel’s segregation wall at the northern entrance of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank and visited the Church of the Nativity.
He said the wall, which has expropriated thousands dunums of Palestinian land, is causing real suffering to the Palestinian people and would not serve peace.
K.F.
