President Mahmoud Abbas chairing the PLO Executive Committee meeting in Ramallah. (WAFA photo/Usama Fallah)

RAMALLAH, May 31, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s games and maneuvers will not deter the Palestinians from pursuing their final peace goals, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said in a statement following its Tuesday night meeting in Ramallah.

It said it will not agree to anything less than an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

“The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization affirmed its adherence to international law, international legitimacy, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders, and the resolution of all permanent status issues (Jerusalem, borders, settlements, refugees, water, security and prisoners), based on pertinent international resolutions through the convening of an international conference with full powers,” said the statement.

“The Executive Committee stressed its absolute rejection of transitional solutions, including the so-called state with provisional borders or the state with two systems, namely the Apartheid regime, currently enforced by the occupation authority (Israel) in all the occupied territories of the State of Palestine (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip), as well as continuation of colonial settler activities, creation of facts on the ground, assassinations, ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, confiscation of land and other practices aimed at preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The Executive Committee condemned what it described as “the maneuvers and games of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government and their desperate attempts to divert attention away from their hostile expansionist and anti-peace policy by inventing crises with the Palestinian side to evade meeting the obligations of a political settlement of the conflict, sometimes by insisting on the Jewishness of the state and sometimes by trying to turn the Palestinian National Fund into a terrorist organization. The Palestinian National Fund is a red line and a national institution of the PLO institutions and that it will continue its national and humanitarian role.”

The PLO called for an end to the division between the Palestinians and to achieve national conciliation through abrogating the administrative authority established by Hamas in Gaza and by allowing the national unity government to carry out its duties in the Gaza Strip.

M.K.