Arab media is reporting that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has told his aides to ask the United Nations Security Council to recognize the PA as a new Arab country, to be called “Palestine.” According to a report published Thursday in the London-based Arabic-language daily A-Sharq al-Awsat, the PA is now prepared to ask the U.N. to recognize a unilaterally-declared new PA state.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit allegedly tried to intervene by asking PA officials to wait for the Obama administration to make another attempt at negotiating a two-state solution with Israel, according to the report. Gheit also allegedly warned that the U.S. must apply further pressure on Israel.
Abbas met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday and held firm on his refusal to engage in direct final status talks with Israel unless a complete freeze is in place on Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and much of Jerusalem. “Our stance is clear and we have announced it to the Americans,” Abbas told reporters. “We will not agree to negotiate as long as settlement building continues.”
Abbas, who met Wednesday with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, said there is no flexibility on the issue of forming a PA state along the 1949 armistice line, referred to by some as the “1967 borders.” He also said that any exchange of land would require similar quantity and quality.
The Fatah Revolutionary Council that is led by Abbas, and which leads the PA, last month issued a proclamation rejecting all proposals for peace, including land swaps, and refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
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2 comments:
"The Fatah Revolutionary Council that is led by Abbas, and which leads the PA, last month issued a proclamation rejecting all proposals for peace, including land swaps, and refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish State."
Right there it is, friends. The PA doesn't want to negotiate (it never did), and it will never recognize Israel as a sovereign state, even though it has been a state since 1948.
Israel has the right to exist in peace, which is all they're trying to do. They didn't start the 1967 war, but they did what they needed to do to end it and secure the country.
Their enemies started something they couldn't finish, they got their butts kicked, and they lost some territory in the process. That's the way war works.
The PA needs to get serious about negotiating a peace if they want to live peacefully.
Otherwise, they'd best prepare for some tough times, since they clearly haven't learned from the past.
The Israelis have been playing the US like a fiddle for 50 years, all negotiations re the occupied territories have been a Kabuki dance exercise in Israeli bad faith and delay tactics.
Israel has a perfect right as an independent nation state to play hardball realpolitik, and we need to get past the foolish notion they ever have any intent on ceding any territory.
Israel is, at its core, a hardcore racist state through and through dedicated to (he extent possible) a purely Jewish population, and the removal of the Palestinian people by whatever means necessary.
We need to stop retending we have a "special" relationship with them and understand it for what it really is. A long term con game. We need to stop being naive about Israel's long term goals and our real influence in these matters
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