The Palestinian leadership on Saturday ruled out a resumption of peace talks without a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, backing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a dispute that has imperiled recently renewed negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded by appealing to Abbas to continue the negotiations. "The way to achieve an historic peace agreement between our two nations is to sit around the negotiating table, seriously and continuously, and not to leave it, because that is the place to resolve our disagreements,'' he said in a statement.
Abbas met at his headquarters in Ramallah with members of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the central committee of his Fatah movement ahead of consultations at an Arab League summit in Libya next weekend.
"The leadership affirmed that the renewal of negotiations requires tangible steps that demonstrate their seriousness, the first of which is halting settlement without conditions or exceptions," said a statement read out by Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official.
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