RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday met with U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Palestine’s official WAFA news agency, Abbas briefed Johnson on “recent developments in the Palestinian territories”.
The Palestinian president, the news agency reported, “also reiterated the illegality of [Israeli] settlement-building” in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel must stop its incursions, arrests and assassinations against the Palestinian people if it wants to give the political process a chance,” the news agency quoted Abbas as telling the visiting British official.
Johnson, for his part, reportedly reaffirmed his country’s support for a “two-state solution” to the perennial Israel-Palestine conflict, stressing the “illegality” of Israeli settlement construction on occupied Arab land.
Earlier Wednesday, Johnson met with Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki, to whom he reportedly said: “The Palestinians and Israelis should sit together to find a solution to the conflict.”
“Britain will not impose itself on them, but would support them if they decided to sit down together,” the foreign secretary said at a subsequent joint press conference.
“The Israeli people need to feel they can live in security without fear of terrorism and violence,” he asserted.
“But,” he went on, “it’s vital too that obstacles — such as the accelerating pace of settlement building, the accelerating pace of [home] demolitions — are also the barriers in the path of a two-state solution.”
He added: “We have to work to remove those barriers.”
Johnson arrived in the region on Tuesday for an official visit to Israel and Palestine.
Later this evening, he is slated to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he is expected to discuss the Palestine file and other regional issues.
