Arab league leaders announced their official support to fully back Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, according to Agence France Presse Wednesday.
"We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state," said the Arab League declaration that was issued at the end of the two-day meeting in Kuwait City Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as "the national homeland of the Jewish people," which in effect would end Palestinian refugees' right of return. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has already stated that "he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state."
The Arab League's announcement, however, comes at a crucial juncture, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Abbas in Jordan Wednesday in an effort to keep the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks together as the April 29 deadline nears.
The negotiations have recently been on the rocks with several critical issues-such as the fourth and final release of Palestinian prisoners at the end of this month-still in question.
Arab league leaders also condemned the Syrian regime in their statement, condemning "killings carried out by the government" during the country's three-year civil war, according to Reuters.
"We condemn in the strongest terms the massacres and the mass killing committed by the Syrian regime's forces against the unarmed people. We call for a political solution to the Syrian crisis in accordance with the Geneva One declaration," the statement read.
