Palestinians are not seeking to isolate Israel: Abbas

Palestinians are not seeking to isolate Israel globally, but will pursue the unilateral demand for UN recognition of statehood and to resume peace talks, said Palestine Authroity President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday.

Abbas is in Doha for a meeting with the Arab leaders to discuss U.S. President Barack Obama's latest proposal for the revival of the peace negotiations and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to accept pre-1967 borders.

However, negotiations remained the best option for bringing about the creation of an independent state, he told Reuters.

“We will review ... the steps we take persisting with negotiations as the fundamental way to achieving a resolution, Abbas said. If we fail in reaching this solution, then we confirm that we will go to the United Nations.

The Palestine Authroity currently has the status of UN observer without voting rights, but there is hope that in September's General Assembly they can convince other nations to accept Palestine as a sovereign state.

Both Netanyahu and Obama have criticized Palestine’s move of going to the UN. Israel believes that if we go to the United Nations, we will work to isolate it and delegitimize it, Abbas said.

This is not at all possible because we do not want to isolate Israel or to delegitimise it. On the contrary, we want to co-exist with it, he added.

US had brokered a talk between the Palestinians and Israelis last September but it broke down in a dispute over continued Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told Reuters that “Israel will not gain security” by clinging to territory beyond the 1967 West Bank frontier.