PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the United Nations. Photo: UN.

JNS.org – Amid the push by Secretary of State John Kerry towards restarting negotiations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted in an interview with the Jordanian daily Al Ra’i as saying that if there is no progress in peace talks, “all options are open.”

“If there is no agreement to push peace forward, all options are open,” Abbas said without going into specifics, according to a Times of Israeltranslation.

The comments by Abbas are the first since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement last week that peace talks would resume after being on hiatus for nearly three years.

In the interview, Abbas also praised his decision to seek unilateral recognition as a non-member observer state at the United Nations last November.

After U.S.-led peace talks failed in 2000, a nearly five-year-long Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada began shortly thereafter.