Four years ago, the West Bank city of Ramallah rejoiced when the United Nations voted to recognize a Palestinian state – a symbolic move, surely, but seen at the time by many as a hopeful step on the road to self-determination. Now few in the city believe that the new U.S. administration will help advance the cause of Palestinian statehood, and that doubt is echoed across much of the Arab world. “The people are very confused,” said Somida Abbas, a 58-year-old Palestinian insurance executive sitting in a café on Ramallah’s main square. But many in the Palestinian territories, and across the region, were shaken by the president’s almost casual dismissal of the longstanding U.S. commitment to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, a diplomatic bedrock known as the two-state solution. “The lack of attention to the Palestinian side…should alarm the Palestinian Authority,” Nabil Amr, a former Palestinian government minister, told Palestinian radio Thursday.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 16, 2017 22:30 UTC