No settlement without Jerusalem: Palestinian official

By Mohamed al-Rayes

CAIRO

The Palestinians will not accept any peace settlement with Israel without Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state, a Palestinian official said Wednesday.

"There can be no political settlement without Jerusalem; Jerusalem is the capital [of Palestine]," Palestinian Ambassador to Egypt Diab al-Louh, who also serves as Palestine’s permanent representative to the Arab League, said.

“We will not accept any political plan that does not explicitly include the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on land occupied [by Israel] in 1967,” al-Louh said in a Wednesday address delivered at the Arab League’s Cairo headquarters.

He delivered his address on the eve of the UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which is marked every year on Nov. 29.

Al-Louh also used the occasion to reiterate the Palestinians’ longstanding rejection of “a state with temporary borders and transitional solutions”.

“Nor can there be any settlement without a just solution for Palestinian refugees, who currently number some 5.4 million worldwide,” he said.