DHAKA: Palestinians will never recognize Israel as the ‘Jewish state’, president Mahmud Abbas said on Saturday, as his leadership convened to chart a course of action after Israel halted peace talks.

‘In 1993 we recognized Israel,’ Abbas told members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Central Council, adding that the Palestinians should not be forced to go a step further and recognize Israel’s religious identity.

Abbas also said the new unity government he is set to head with Hamas backing would reject violence and recognize Israel and existing agreements with it.

‘The upcoming government will obey my policy,’ he told members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Central Council. ‘I recognize Israel and reject violence and terrorism, and recognize international commitments.’

Israel had made recognition of it as a ‘Jewish state’ a key demand in peace talks, which it withdrew from after Abbas’s PLO on April 23 signed a reconciliation deal with the Islamist Hamas movement, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Any new measures would follow a raft of financial sanctions unveiled this month when the Palestinians applied to adhere to 15 international treaties.

‘The pact with Hamas kills peace,’ Netanyahu told NBC television shortly after the cabinet decision.

Netanyahu said it was signed ‘while Israel was making efforts to advance the negotiations with the Palestinians’ and was ‘a direct continuation of the Palestinian recalcitrance to promote negotiations’, due to expire on April 29.

BDST: 1851 HRS, APR 26, 2014