RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) — Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday refused to be drawn on a demand by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Palestinians recognise the Jewish nature of Israel.
"Historic Palestine will be divided into two states -- Israel and Palestine," he told reporters in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.
"We do not discuss the character of one or the other. That's all I have to say on the matter," Abbas said at a joint news conference with visiting Ukraine President Victor Yushchenko.
On Wednesday during talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Olmert said that "the starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians following the Annapolis meeting will be recognition of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people."
Israel and the Palestinians are expected to enter into US-sponsored talks at Annapolis in Maryland before the end of November in a bid to kickstart the dormant Middle East peace process.
"The prime minister made it clear that from Israel's point-of-view. this issue is not subject to either negotiations or discussion," Olmert's office said.
But Israel's demand has already been rejected by the Palestinians as unacceptable because it would mean them effectively renouncing the right of return for refugees ousted when the state of Israel was created in 1948.
The fate of those refugees and their descendants -- estimated at 4.5 million people -- is a key issue in the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel refuses to countenance talk of their return, saying this would threaten its very existence and make the country's six million Jews a minority.
There are 1.3 million Arab-Israeli citizens, 20 percent of the population, who are descended from the 160,000 Palestinians who stayed when Israel was proclaimed 59 years ago.
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