President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has called for intensified demonstrations and protests in Palestine and also scorn for US Vice President Mike Pence due to talk with Fatah leader.
In a statement Fatah has urged Palestinians to “keep up confrontation and broaden it to all points where the Israeli army is present” in the West Bank.
Fatah called on Palestinians to keep up their demonstrations over Washington’s policy shift on Jerusalem.
Fatah leader will refuse to meet with US Vice President later this month in protest at the controversial decision.
Farah, formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Fatah is generally considered to have had a strong involvement in revolutionary struggle in the past
After protests gripped the West Bank and Gaza for a third straight day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due in Paris on Sunday where demonstrators had rallied on the eve of his arrival.
Arab League ministers, meeting in an emergency meeting in Cairo late Saturday, meanwhile urged Washington to rescind its Jerusalem decision.
President Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital upended decades of American diplomacy, causing an overwhelming global diplomatic backlash.
Four Palestinians have now been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the new policy, which drew criticism from every other UN Security Council member at an emergency meeting on Friday.
Fatah’s leader — Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas — also became the latest influential Arab figure to pull out of talks with Pence who will travel to the region later this month.
“There will be no meeting with the vice president of America in Palestine,” Abbas’s diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi.
“The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision.”
Egypt’s Coptic Pope Tawadros II also cancelled a meeting with Pence, saying Trump’s announcement had failed to take into account the “feelings of millions” of Arabs.
Ahmed al-Tayeb who heads Al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim institution, has also pulled out of a planned meet.
There were fresh clashes Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds.
Retaliatory Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants on Saturday while two others died near the border fence the day before.
Mourners vented their anger at the funerals of those killed while a bus was also stoned near Arab towns in Israel’s northern Wadi Ara district, injuring the driver.
An Israeli army statement said “violent riots have erupted at approximately 20 locations” in the West Bank and Gaza with soldiers using “riot dispersal means” that lightly injured three Palestinians.
The Palestinian Red Crescent gave a higher toll of 171 hurt in the West Bank and 60 in Gaza, with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to tear gas inhalation and beating by security forces.
There have been fears of a much larger escalation of violence after Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group both renewed that call on Saturday.
