Eurasia Press & News
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed the importance of Israelis and Palestinians “working to maintain calm and de-escalate tensions,” during a phone call on Tuesday evening with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, according to a readout from the State Department.
Blinken also “underscored the importance” of the Palestinian Authority concluding an investigation into the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was a dual American and Palestinian citizen, who was killed while she was reporting on an Israel Defense Forces arrest raid in Jenin on May 11.
Blinken “emphasized the importance of the US-Palestinian relationship, and the administration’s support for a negotiated two-state solution.” Meanwhile, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported that “President Abbas indicated that the current situation cannot be tolerated given the absence of a political horizon, the lack of international protection for the Palestinian people, and the Israeli occupation authorities’ evasion of their obligations under signed agreements and resolutions of international legitimacy, along with their ongoing unilateral actions and settler intrusions into Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the recent ‘March of the Flags’ organized by Israeli Jewish supremacists to celebrate Israel’s occupation and colonization of East Jerusalem.”
Abbas called on Blinken to remove the PLO from the US foreign terror list and to reopen the US consulate in east Jerusalem and the PLO office in Washington.
