Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday warned that there could be “no peace or stability” in the Middle East until Jerusalem is recognised as the capital of a Palestinian state.
“Jerusalem is and will forever be the capital of the Palestinian state… There will be no peace, no stability without that,” Abbas told an emergency meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul.
He slammed the recognition by US President Donald Trump of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a “gift” to the “Zionist movement” as if he “were giving away an American city,” adding that Washington no longer had any role to play in the Middle East peace process.