RAMALLAH, West Bank: US President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, called yesterday for the Arab Peace Initiative to be part of a planned US drive to create a Palestinian state.

The 2002 Arab initiative offers Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for a full withdrawal from the lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War, creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees.

“The US is committed to the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state where the aspirations of the Palestinian people to control their destiny are realized. We want the Arab Peace Initiative to be part of the effort to reach this goal,” Mitchell said after talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Mitchell met Thursday with Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has yet to commit to restarting US-backed talks with Abbas on core issues such as statehood borders, and the future of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Israeli officials quoted Netanyahu as telling Mitchell that his right-leaning government wanted the Palestinians to first recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinians have long rejected such explicit recognition of the Jewish nature of a state where one in five people is Arab.

“It is clear that there is a government in Israel that rejects signed agreements, that insists on continuing settlement activities,” senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Erekat said Abbas asked Mitchell to “exert every possible effort” to pressure Israel to commit to a two-state solution and to meet other obligations, including a freeze in Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and a halt to home demolitions in Arab East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s two-week-old government has yet to take a public position on the Arab Peace Initiative.

During Mitchell’s visit, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian protester in the West Bank and a security guard shot dead a Palestinian who infiltrated a Jewish settlement, also in the occupied area.

Palestinian hospital officials said a 30-year-old man died of a wound to the chest during a protest at the village of Bilin, site of almost weekly protests against a wall that Israel is building in the Palestinian territory.

Earlier, a Palestinian with a knife infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the southern part of the occupied West Bank and was shot dead by a security guard, the Israeli Army said.