Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Arab leaders assembled at a Damascus summit Saturday to send peacekeeping troops to the Palestinian territories, as Arab leaders debated the future of a 2002 peace initiative.

"It has become clear that the Israeli government is imposing on the ground the political solution that it wants," Abbas said. "Negotiations cannot continue under the Israeli bulldozers swallowing our land and building settlements and under the daily Israeli military operations."

"The parameters and plans of the solution that Israel is drawing on the ground would not leave more than a group of isolated enclaves of land torn apart by settlements and the wall of racial separation," Abbas continued.

"Jerusalem ... is facing the most vicious settlement campaign which is aimed at its Arab character through confiscation of lands, building settlements and destroying houses of [Arab] residents with the aim of isolating Jerusalem from the rest of the Palestinian lands," he added.