US President Joe Biden pledged on Friday to keep up efforts to support a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, Biden said the United States would not give up on the goal of a just settlement to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
“The Palestinian people are hurting now,” Biden said. “You can just feel it. Your grief and frustration. In the United States, we can feel it.”
Biden said they “deserve a state of their own that’s independent, sovereign, viable and contiguous. Two states for two peoples, both of whom have deep and ancient roots in this land, living side by side in peace and security.”
Although such a goal “can seem so far away,” he said he wouldn't give up on the peace process.
“Even if the ground is not ripe at this moment to restart negotiations, the United States and my administration will not give up on bringing the Palestinians and the Israelis, both sides, closer together,” he noted.
Biden announced that the US will allocate $200 million to support the Palestinians. Earlier Friday, Biden appeared in east Jerusalem at the Augusta Victoria Hospital, which serves Palestinians, to discuss financial assistance for local healthcare. He proposed $100 million, which requires US congressional approval, plus smaller amounts for other assorted programs.
“Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and dignity,” he said at the hospital.
“And access to healthcare, when you need it, is essential to living a life of dignity for all of us.”
He also affirmed that the US will continue to insist on full accounting for death of Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on May 11.
Biden said the US “will continue to insist on a full and transparent accounting of her death and will continue to stand up for media freedom everywhere in the world.”
He called her death "an enormous loss to the essential work of sharing with the world the story of the Palestinian people.”
Palestinian journalists wore black T-shirts with Abu Akleh's picture and placed a poster of her on an empty chair in the room where the leaders spoke.
For his part, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there was a narrowing window for the two-state solution to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The opportunity for a two-state solution on the 1967 borders may be available today, and it may not remain for a long time," Abbas said after meeting with US President Joe Biden in the occupied West Bank.
He also stressed the importance of re-establishing the foundations upon which the peace process was based.
“The key to peace” in the region “begins with ending the Israeli occupation of our land.”
Abbas said Israel “cannot continue to act as a state above law" and said the killers of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh “need to be held accountable.”
He indicated that they were looking forward to steps from the US administration "to strengthen bilateral relations by reopening the US consulate in East Jerusalem, removing PLO from US terrorist list, and re-opening PLO office in Washington."
