By Xinhua
Ramallah : Acting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday ruled out a peace deal with Israel this year due to the slow progress of negotiations.
“I personally think that reaching a peace treaty in 2008 is impossible because the talks were very slow over the past three months,” Fayyad said during a meeting with a delegation from American Jews at his office in Ramallah.
“The negotiations should be sped up to in order to reach the agreement by the end of this year,” Fayyad added.
The U.S. administration hosted an international peace conference last November during which the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were resumed following years of suspension.
The building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem and the Israeli army attacks obstruct the progress of the talks, according to Fayyad.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement said the negotiations have not “achieved anything on the ground.”
“Israel is unconvinced that the creation of a Palestinian statehood means the withdrawal from the territories which were occupied in the 1967 war,” the spokesman, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, told reporters.