RAMALLAH, Tuesday, October 05, 2021 – President Mahmoud Abbas received U.S. envoy Hady Amr and his accompanying delegation last night at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah, where they discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories.

President Abbas reiterated to Amr the points he had outlined in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, including the initiatives aimed at ending the Israeli occupation and enabling the Palestinian people to achieve freedom and independence. He stressed that the current situation is untenable and that continuing under occupation is impossible.

He emphasized the importance of strengthening Palestinian–U.S. relations in a way that serves the interests of both peoples and both countries.

President Abbas also highlighted the need to implement the commitments made by U.S. President Joe Biden during their latest phone call—chief among them the U.S. commitment to the two-state solution; rejection of settlement expansion and any attempts to alter the status quo at Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Al-Aqsa Mosque); opposition to the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in occupied Jerusalem; and rejection of unilateral measures from all sides.

The President stressed that the status quo cannot continue and called for urgent U.S. pressure on Israel to halt all actions against the Palestinian people, including settlement expansion, land annexation, punitive measures against prisoners, withholding of the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, extrajudicial killings, settler attacks, incursions, land confiscation, and assaults on Islamic and Christian holy sites. He also called for stopping attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians and ending the ongoing blockade on the Gaza Strip.

President Abbas reaffirmed his readiness to engage immediately in a political process based on United Nations resolutions and to convene an international peace conference, under the auspices of the UN and the International Quartet, to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.