Fatah on Saturday called on Palestinians to keep up their demonstrations over Washington’s move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as the movement confirmed that its leader will refuse to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence later this month in protest of the controversial decision.
After protests gripped the West Bank and Gaza for a third straight day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was yesterday due in Paris, where demonstrators had rallied on the eve of his arrival.
Arab League ministers, meeting in an emergency meeting in Cairo late on Saturday, urged Washington to rescind its decision.
US President Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday upended decades of US diplomacy, causing an overwhelming global diplomatic backlash.
Four Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the new policy, which drew criticism from every other UN Security Council member at an emergency meeting on Friday.
In a statement, Fatah urged Palestinians to “keep up confrontation and broaden it to all points where the Israeli army is present” in the West Bank.
Its leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also became the latest influential Arab figure to pull out of talks with Pence who is to travel to the region later this month.
“There will be no meeting with the vice president of America in Palestine,” Abbas’ diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi told reporters.
‘CROSSED ALL RED LINES’
“The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision,” he said.
Egypt’s Coptic Pope Tawadros II also canceled a meeting with Pence, saying Trump’s announcement had failed to take into account the “feelings of millions” of Arabs.
Ahmed al-Tayeb, who heads al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim institution, has also pulled out of a planned meet.
There were fresh clashes on Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds.
Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants on Saturday while two others died near the border fence the day before.
Mourners vented their anger at the funerals of those killed while a bus was also stoned near Arab towns in Israel’s northern Wadi Ara district, injuring the driver.
“Violent riots have erupted at approximately 20 locations” in the West Bank and Gaza with soldiers using “riot dispersal means” that lightly injured three Palestinians, the Israeli army said in a statement.
The Palestinian Red Crescent gave a higher toll of 171 hurt in the West Bank and 60 in Gaza, with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to tear gas inhalation and beating by security forces.
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