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Ramallah, Palestinian Territories (AFP) Jan 12, 2011 The Palestinians blamed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday for the deadlock in the peace process because of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. "The Israeli government and its chief Benjamin Netanyahu are responsible for the current crisis in the peace process and the deadlock provoked by their obstinacy in continuing settlement activity," president Mahmud Abbas's spokesman said. "Mr Netanyahu's attempt to bounce the ball back into the Palestinian camp is doomed to fail, because the whole world knows very well which side does not respect the necessary agreements for a true peace process," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP. He was speaking a day after Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for the stalled peace process, saying their refusal to negotiate showed they were not interested in peace. "What is preventing the advent of peace, the advent of peace negotiations is that the Palestinians are doing everything in their power to avoid them," Netanyahu told a meeting of foreign journalists in Jerusalem. "That is the simple truth." Abu Rudeina said: "The comments by Netanyahu blaming the Palestinians for the crisis are a sign of the isolation Israel finds itself in over its extremist policy of settlements." He reiterated that the Palestinian leadership was ready to return to the negotiating table if Israel halted all settlement, including in annexed east Jerusalem. An estimated 2,000 Jewish settlers live in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the Holy City, although the exact number of properties they own is unclear. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any attempts to widen Israeli control over it. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move the rest of the world has never recognised. The Jewish state considers the whole of Jerusalem its "eternal and indivisible" capital.
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