Senior Palestinian official says Trump meant all of Jerusalem

Senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayeh says US President Donald Trump did not leave any room for the boundaries of Jerusalem to be negotiated in the future.

“If the president kept the door open for negotiations on the borders of Jerusalem, he could have said the Palestinians have the right to a capital in East Jerusalem,” he tells reporters at a press conference in Beit Jala, a town near Bethlehem in the West Bank.

“The Jerusalem defined by the Americans is the Jerusalem defined by Netanyahu,” he adds, meaning the entire municipal boundaries as currently defined by Israel, which includes West and East Jerusalem.

Shtayeh, who has been a senior member of the Palestinian negotiation team since the early 1990s, explains, “When we refer to Jerusalem, we refer to Jerusalem that was there before 1967.”

— Dov Lieber

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