Palestinians gather as Abbas pushes for UN recognition

The West Bank was today filled with flag-waving Palestinians as their president, Mahmoud Abbas, prepares to meet Barack Obama in New York ahead of the former’s planned submission to the United Nations on Friday of an application for Palestinian statehood.

At a rally in Ramallah, one headteacher, Amina Abdel Jabbar al-Kiswani, said the UN bid was a step on the road to statehood, not a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, gave schoolchildren and civil servants the day off to attend events in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron.

Barack Obama will urge President Abbas to drop plans to ask the UN Security Council to recognise a Palestisnian state. Washington says statehood should be achieved through peace talks.

Israel‘s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is also due to meet the US president later today. Mr Netanyahu has rejected as unacceptable the Palestinian call for a halt to Israeli settlement building in areas Palestinians want for a state.

Palestinians hope to establish a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza strip, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israel war.