The secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said on Monday that the Arab nations' rejection of the recent US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel serves as an affirmation of their recognition of the state of Palestine. Aboul Gheit made the comments during his speech to an emergency meeting of the Arab Parliament in Cairo to respond to US President Donald Trump's Wednesday's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Arab Parliament President Mishaal bin Fahd al-Salami had called on Thursday for the emergency meeting of the parliament following Trump's announcement. In 2013, in a move largely orchestrated to pressure the international community to step up efforts to implement UN decisions to end the decades-old Israeli occuption, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared an independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. Abbas announced the move before the United Nations General Assemby. By late 2015, the UNGA announced that 136 out of 193 member states had decared their recogntion of the Palestinian state. However, Israel and the United States rejected the declaration, and then US President Barack Obama said his country would veto any United Nations Security Council move to recognize Palestinian statehood. On Saturday, the foreign ministers of Arab countries called during an emergency meeting on the US to revoke Trump's Jerusalem decision and demanded the creation of a Palestinian state on 4 June, 1967 lines. More to follow.
