PLO parliament announces expiry of interim peace deals with Israel

Source: Xinhua| 2018-05-04 17:33:27|Editor: Lifang
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RAMALLAH, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian National Council (PNC), or the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said on Friday that the interim stage in the peace agreements with Israel has expired.

The announcement came in the final statement of the four-day PNC meeting held in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a new PLO executive committee was elected with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as its chairman.

Israel and the PLO have signed a series of peace accords and agreements in Oslo, Cairo and Washington since 1993, where both agreed on a transitional period, which ended in 2000 and was supposed to be followed by permanent status peace talks.

However, the PNC said in the final statement that the interim peace agreements signed with Israel "are not valid and don't exist anymore."

"The immediate goal is the independence of the State of Palestine, and this needs to move from the status of self-autonomy to the status of Palestine on the territories of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital," read the statement.

The PNC also reaffirmed the Palestinians' rejection to the U.S. declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in last December and its plans to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.

"The U.S. government has lost its eligibility as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process and will only be a partner in this process until the cancellation of President Trump's decision on Jerusalem," said the statement.

Meanwhile, the PNC criticized Trump's policy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for contravening the resolutions of international legitimacy.

The PLO parliament also highlighted the need to annul the decision by the U.S. government to close its office in Washington on Nov. 17.

On its ties with Israel, the statement called them "a relation with an occupying power."

The PNC said it rejects all transitional and partial solutions to the Palestinian cause and the conflict with Israel, ruling out the possibility of establishing a state with temporary borders.

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