President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia met on Tuesday with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank oasis town of Jericho and reaffirmed his country’s support for a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Palestinian leaders hailed the visit as historic, noting that this was the first time such a high-profile international figure had gone to Palestinian territory independently of a visit to Israel.
Mr. Medvedev, on his first trip to the area as president, was scheduled to visit Israel as well, but that part of his itinerary had to be postponed because of a strike by employees of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Foreign Ministry officials, striking for more pay and better conditions, said this month that they were unable to prepare for the planned visit.
The presence of the Russian president in the Israeli-occupied West Bank gave a lift to the Palestinians at a time when peace talks are stalled and the Palestinians are increasingly looking for international recognition of their claims and support for their cause.
At the Palestinians’ request, several South American countries recently recognized Palestinian rights to an independent state alongside Israel, in the territories that Israel conquered in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians say they also plan to ask the United Nations Security Council in the next week or two to condemn Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In Jericho, Mr. Medvedev told reporters that Russia fully supported “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to an independent, territorially contiguous and viable state with its capital in East Jerusalem.” He said Russia’s position “remains unchanged,” referring to the Soviet Union’s support for the Palestinian declaration of independence of 1988, which was issued by Yasir Arafat in Algiers.
Mr. Medvedev traveled to the West Bank in a convoy from Jordan, crossing the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River.
Mr. Abbas, in a statement to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, described Mr. Medvedev’s visit as a “crown” for the Palestinian people’s heads.
In Gaza, a Palestinian was killed on Tuesday and two militants were wounded in a skirmish along the border with Israel, according to a Palestinian medical official. The Palestinian who was killed was identified as Amjad al-Za’aneen, 17.
The Israeli military said that Palestinians detonated an explosive device near a force patrolling the border fence in the morning, and that soon after, the soldiers spotted two Palestinians handling a trigger system and opened fire.
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