JERUSALEM: Israel's insistence on Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state and the Palestinian refusal to comply is threatening bring about the collapse of US-led peace talks.

“I will not accept an agreement that does not cancel the (refugees') right of return and which does not include Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

“In light of the latest statements by the Palestinians, we are getting further away from an agreement,” he charged.

His remarks were made a day after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas reiterated his refusal to recognise “the Jewishness of the State of Israel” in a speech to the Revolutionary Council of his ruling Fatah party. A similar statement was issued at the weekend by the Arab League.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is facing an uphill battle to keep peace talks on track beyond an April 29 deadline, with the negotiations waylaid over several key issues, including the question of recognition.

Abbas, who will meet US President Barack Obama at the White House on March 17, reassured delegates on Monday that at the age of 79 he wasn't going to “back down on his people's rights or betray their cause”.

But Netanyahu has turned the issue into a pivotal demand of any peace agreement, describing Arab rejection of the Jewish state as the “root of the conflict” between the two peoples.

The Palestinian refusal stems from a reluctance to give up what they hold most sacred – the memory of the Nakba, or catastrophe that befell them when 760,000 of their people fled or were forced out of their homes in the war that accompanied Israel's establishment in 1948.—AFP