The Palestinian Authority (PA) "prime minister," Rami Hamdallah, said Friday that Jerusalem – or Al Quds, as Arabs refer to it – is the PA's capital city and its status is non-negotiable.
Speaking on behalf of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas at the annual conference of the union of Ramallah residents, Hamdallah said that there is a Palestinian consensus that rejects US President Donald Trump's attempt to "blackmail" the PA and force it into accepting a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We will not allow our national rights to be turned into human rights or financial ones, because these are political, historical and legal rights tht cannot be altered," he said.
Hamdallah called the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "illegal". He claimed that the American move makes it possible for Israel to ratchet up its plans to "isolate and annex" Jerusalem, and to execute its plans to evict the Bedouins who live in its vicinity, in order to "forge" history and remove the Palestinian presence from the city.
He blamed the "forces of occupation" of continuing to sow death among "the helpless Palestinian people" in the so-called "marches of return" along the Gaza border. Since March 30, he claimed, 143 Arabs were killed in the riots, 18 of them minors and two of them women.