ARAB nations declared support for Palestine’s rights to East Jerusalem over the weekend, urging worldwide opposition to the US agenda.

Foreign ministers of six Arab League nations and the bloc’s secretary-general Ahmed Aboul Gheit met in Jordan’s capital Amman on Saturday to compose a joint response to US president Donald Trump’s unilateral recognition of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital.

The committee of ministers from Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was formed at the December 9 emergency Arab League summit in Cairo.

Jordan’s Ayman Safadi said: “We will confront the decision by seeking a [UN] resolution, an international one, to recognise a Palestinian state on 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.

Mr Aboul Gheit said Washington’s future as a peace broker had been jeopardised by its clear bias towards Israel.

“We want to lessen any losses on the Palestinian side and lessen the Israeli gains,” he said.

Palestine has long declared East Jerusalem the future capital of an independent state with the restoration of territories occupied by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967.

But Israel has undermined the two-state solution for decades by establishing settlements on Palestinian land across East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of UN resolutions.

Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said on Saturday that the authorities were set to approve 1,329 new homes in illegal settlements.

On the same day Palestinians stoned the motorcade of Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III — accused of selling church land to Israelis — on his way to the Orthodox Christmas mass in Bethlehem.

Yesterday, the Syrian Arab Popular Committee for Supporting the Palestinian People called for Arab and international opinion to be rallied against Israel’s bid to separate Jerusalem (al-Quds) from the rest of the Palestinian territories.

The committee was founded in 2001 during the second Palestinian intifada or uprising.

“Al-Quds always was and always will be Arab, and any attempt to force a fake identity on it will fail,” the committee said, urging all Arab political parties and democratic organisations to condemn the US declaration.

Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 at the start of the western-backed insurgency, giving its seat to the Turkish-based Syrian National Coalition instead.