World Bulletin / News Desk

Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said on Monday that al-Quds (East Jerusalem) is a red line to the Hashemite kingdom.

Speaking at the opening of an UNRWA meeting, Judeh said his country will exert utmost efforts to achieve the two-state solution and establish peace in the Middle East.

"We maintain our efforts at the regional and international levels to achieve this goal," Judeh said in the speech delivered on his behalf by Secretary General of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry Mohamed Tayser Bani Yaseen.

"We also work to overcome obstacles to the resumption of serious peace talks that dwell on final status issues with the aim of achieving the two-state solution as soon as possible," he added.

Palestinian-Israeli peace talks hit a setback in April after Israel refused to release Palestinian prisoners as pledged.

Another bump was waiting Palestinian-Israeli relations on Thursday when three Israeli teens went missing in a southern occupied West Bank settlement. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of kidnapping the three boys.

Netanyahu had earlier said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was responsible for the safety of the three boys.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. In 1980, it unilaterally annexed the area and claimed Jerusalem as the unified capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – in a move never recognized by the international community.

In 1994, Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty that normalized relations between the two countries and allowed them to exchange ambassadors.

Ties between the two neighbors recently soured, however, after an Israeli lawmaker proposed legislation that would revoke Jordanian oversight of Islamic and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the treaty.