Riyad al-Maliki
Riyad al-MalikiReuters

Riyad al-Malki, the Palestinian Authority (PA) “foreign minister”, said in an interview on Friday that Washington is hoping to renew its diplomatic relations with the PA as it prepares to release its long-awaited peace proposal.

Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper and quoted by i24NEWS, Malki said that US officials had recently attempted to re-initiate negotiations but "contacts are still completely cut off."

Malki added that the US "will not find a single Palestinian to accept" its peace plan if it fails to include eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

"The issue is not financial but a principle and the right of the Palestinians to lift the injustice upon them," he explained, adding that no amount of monetary compensation could make the lack of Palestinian statehood "acceptable."

The Trump administration’s peace plan is scheduled to be unveiled in June, after Ramadan.

A source familiar with the Trump peace plan recently told The Washington Post that it will include practical improvements in the lives of Palestinian Arabs but is likely to stop short of ensuring a separate, fully sovereign Palestinian state.

The PA has been boycotting the US ever since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December of 2017 and has rejected the US peace plan before it has even been unveiled.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)