Palestinian Authority unity government chairman Mahmoud Abbas reportedly told Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to “end the occupation” and “make peace” Monday in a message ahead of the start of the five-day United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
The two men were allegedly involved in secret talks via veteran negotiators Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and PA senior official Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala’a).
Both men are expected to deliver addresses to the world body. Netanyahu will follow his speech with a subsequent meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss issues regarding the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist threat in the region.
Abbas is expected to demand the UN force Israel to commit to a schedule for withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice lines and leave Judea, Samaria and nearly half of Jerusalem “Judenrein” — while also presenting his version of a timetable for ‘peace talks’ with the Jewish State.
The move, however, is tantamount to an end run designed to evade responsibility under the internationally recognized Oslo Accords which mandates the Palestinian Authority and Israel come to an agreed-upon final status based on mutual understandings. The final status is to be reached only after prior steps have been completed, such as official abandonment of violence by the PA and its associated groups, and an end to terrorism.
None of that has taken place: Official Ramallah-based PA government-sanctioned and controlled media still promotes terrorism and incites against the State of Israel on multiple levels. In addition, school textbooks in the PA classrooms do the same, thus laying the groundwork at the earliest age possible for development of the next generation of Arab terrorism against Israel and Jews.
The Obama administration also appears to have aided and abetted the PA in its mission this time around: In an interview with PA TV last month, Abbas claimed it would take less than an hour to decide on borders for a PA state because, as he said, the United States had already “agreed they should be based on the 1967 borders” that existed before the Six Day War.
Failing that, said Abbas, “The international community has the responsibility to protect our people, living under the terror of settlers, an occupying army,” he told a crowd at Cooper Union hall, according to AFP.
“Either there is a political solution or there is not, but going here and there, up and down, talking and not talking … it has been 20 years and nothing has happened,” Abbas said.
In his comments Abbas failed to acknowledge the fact that both he and Yasser Arafat before him have both been offered settlements numerous times by the Israeli government – including one that offered 97 percent of the territory won in the 1967 Six Day War; everything, in fact, except Jerusalem – and all of the offers were turned down cold.
Both Abbas, and Arafat before him, repeatedly insisted that without Israel handing over nearly half of its own holy capital, Jerusalem, no settlement would ever be accepted.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed never to hand over Jerusalem to anyone.