Salam Fayyad, the western-backed Palestinian prime minister, on Monday urged all Palestinians to join forces and build up the necessary institutions that would enable them to establish an independent state within two years.

Mr Fayyad, in a speech at Al-Quds University near Jerusalem, said: “I call on all our people to unite around the project of establishing a state and to strengthen its institutions … so that the Palestinian state becomes, by the end of next year or within two years at most, a reality.”