The Palestinian Authority welcomed the Saudi position today, Thursday, which links normalization with Israel to resolving the Palestinian issue. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki expressed gratitude in a statement to "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and His Excellency Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan for emphasizing the necessity of finding a just solution to the Palestinian issue by ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state as a condition for any Saudi normalization with the occupying state."
Al-Maliki hoped that "the U.S. administration, represented by its president and secretary of state, would invest a fraction of the efforts it exerts to entice countries to normalize their relations with the occupying state, towards ending that occupation." He added, "and compelling Israel to sit at the negotiating table to reach an agreement that ends the occupation and embodies the two-state solution through a sovereign, viable, and geographically contiguous Palestinian state along the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its eternal capital."
