Ramallah, January 15 (RHC)-- Acting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Abbas made the remarks during a speech in front of hundreds of Palestinians in the West bank city of Ramallah, adding Palestinians would not drop demands for a capital in East Jerusalem.

Abbas’s remarks followed an announcement regarding Tel Aviv’s plans to build 1,400 more illegal settlement units -- 1,800 according to some reports -- in East Jerusalem amid the so-called peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli officials.

The fresh round of negotiations began in July 2013 to end the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the so-called two-state solution after a three-year hiatus.

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the besieged Gaza Strip and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories. Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of Jerusalem.