5 days ago
Arab officials put off rare West Bank trip over Israeli 'obstruction'
Top Arab diplomats, who had planned to make a rare visit to the West Bank, have decided to postpone the trip due to "Israel's obstruction", Jordan said on Saturday.
An Arab delegation led by the Saudi foreign minister had originally planned to travel from Jordan to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in what would have been the first such high-level visit since Israel occupied the Palestinian territory in 1967.
"The committee decided to postpone the visit to Ramallah in light of Israel's obstruction of its mission by refusing the delegation entry through airspace in the occupied West Bank controlled by Israel," the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said.
The ministers slammed the reported Israeli decision, calling it a "flagrant violation of Israel's obligations as the occupying power," the ministry added in a statement posted on the social media platform X.
There was no official Israeli comment on the visit.
The delegation includes the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other countries, the Saudi state television Al Ekhbariya reported earlier this week.
The broadcaster quoted the Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh as saying the team planned during the Ramallah visit to discuss drumming up international support for Palestinian statehood ahead of a conference on a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, including the creation of a Palestinian state alongside with Israel.
Saudi Arabia and France are due to co-chair the conference in New York on June 17-20.
The Israeli media outlet ynet quoted an Israeli official as saying that "such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel."
