U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan on Wednesday (Photo credit: AP)

Just a day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the Arab League backed his rejectionism on Wednesday, declaring an “absolute rejection” of any recognition of a Jewish state.

“We hold Israel entirely responsible for the lack of progress in the peace process and continuing tension in the Middle East,” said a communique issued at the end of a two-day Arab League summit in Kuwait. “We express our absolute and decisive rejection to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.”

Abbas—who spoke at the start of the summit and declared that “the peace process is on the verge of collapse”—met on Wednesday in Amman with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who interrupted a trip to Italy to fly to the Middle East to try to salvage the faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Kerry arrived in Jordan to ask Abbas to commit to an extension of the peace talks. Kerry and Abbas spoke for more than four hours over a working dinner in Amman that U.S. officials said was “constructive.” No other details of the meeting were released.

Kerry also spoke by telephone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the three-hour flight from Italy to Jordan, U.S. officials said; the two were due to speak again after Kerry dined with Abbas.

While in Amman, Kerry also meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, back from the Arab League summit in Kuwait.

There, Abdullah had said his country would continue to protect Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. He called on the international community to pressure Israel to “desist from the steps it’s been taking.”

“The path to a just peace goes through the establishment of the State of Palestine,” Abdullah said.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials refused to say whether or not the fourth stage of the prisoner release would take place on Saturday night, as originally planned. One senior Palestinian official told Israel Hayom he believed that “as of now, it appears the release will not happen, because of the opposition of the Israeli government.”

An Israeli official, however, said Israel would go ahead with the release, and is ready to “restrain construction” outside the settlement blocs (without an official government decision on the matter), if Abbas agrees to a one-year extension of the peace talks.

Netanyahu has refrained from publicly commenting on the prisoner release, and the decision on whether to go ahead with it or not, with or without Palestinian agreement to an extension of the peace talks, will likely be made only at the start of next week.

Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar (Likud) on Wednesday expressed vehement opposition to any sort of constriction freeze.

“We’ve reached a stage where, in order to prolong the negotiations, the Palestinians are demanding more and more unilateral concessions,” Sa’ar said. “There’s no room for additional concessions simply so [the Palestinians] agree to continue negotiating with us.”

Meanwhile, about 150 people demonstrated outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem on Wednesday against the release of terrorists. The demonstrators included bereaved family members of terror attack victims and activists from the Almagor Terror Victims Association. Demonstrators carried signs with images of relatives who were killed in terrorist attacks, and chanted slogans such as, “Don’t free murderers.”