CAIRO, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The Arab Parliament called Wednesday on European parliaments to push their governments to recognize Palestine as an independent state.
The Arab Parliament Speaker, Mashaal bin Fahm al-Salami, sent letters to a number of European parliaments asking them to work with their governments to recognize the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, the pan-Arab body said in a statement.
The letters were sent to the parliaments of the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain, the statement said.
Al-Salami hailed the historic stances of these countries which voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution in December 2017, which affirmed that any decisions and actions to alter the character, status or demographic composition of Jerusalem are "null and void" and "have no legal effect."
The UN resolution came days after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and decided to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed city.
The Palestinians consider East Jerusalem, which was seized by the Israelis in the 1967 war, as the capital of their future independent state, while the Israelis insist that the entire city is their eternal capital.
