Arab foreign ministers insisted on Wednesday that Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state, even as the U.S. prepares to move its embassy to the contentious city as an act of recognizing it as Israel's capital, a step that has angered the Arab world.
A ministerial meeting held in the Egyptian capital of Cairo brought together foreign ministers from Arab League member-states amid a wave of anger at U.S. President Donald Trump's Dec. 6 declaration officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. At the time, the declaration sparked protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In their closing statement, the ministers endorsed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' call at the United Nations Security Council last month for the recognition of a Palestinian state, an international peace conference to be held by mid-2018 and a timetable for a two-state solution.
Abbas called for mutual recognition by the states of Israel and Palestine based on 1967 borders and formation of "an international multilateral mechanism" to assist the two parties in resolving all final status issues and implementing them within a set time frame.
"The Arab League has already decided to stand against the negative consequences of the American dangerous and illegal decision of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing the occupied city as a capital of Israel," said Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit in a televised press conference.
Trump's declaration departed from decades of U.S. policy and upended long-standing international assurances that the fate of the city would be determined in negotiations.
