Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (C) sits next to Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah (L) and Tayeb Abdul Rahim, general secretary of the Palestinian Authority’s executive committee, during a ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in this November 11, 2014 photo.

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian leadership on Tuesday slammed the Israeli government’s approval of a law determining the country’s status as the national Jewish homeland, saying it “killed” Middle East peace prospects.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee expressed in a statement its “strong condemnation and rejection of this law.”

“The law aims to kill the two-state solution by imposing the project of a ‘greater Israel’ as well as the Jewishness of the state upon the historical land of Palestine,” said the PLO, which dominates the Palestinian Authority.

Israel’s Cabinet on Sunday endorsed a proposal to anchor in law the country’s status as “the national state of the Jewish people,” voting 14 to six in favor of the initiative. The Knesset, is to vote on it on Dec. 3.

Critics, who include the government’s top legal adviser, say the proposed change could institutionalize discrimination against its 1.7 million Arab citizens — descendents of the 160,000 Palestinians who stayed after Israel was established in 1948.

And the PLO said the law was “an attempt to tarnish and twist the Palestinian historical narrative and wipe out Palestinian existence” in the region, by reserving it exclusively for Jews.

 
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