Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas says he may be “forced” to suspend security cooperation with Israel if the “colonization” — as he put it — continues.
During a visit by the PA leader to Paris this week, he told the French Senate, “If the colonization continues, I would have no other choice, it would not be my fault.”
Given the escalating daily terrorist attacks Israeli drivers are forced to endure on the roads of Judea and Samaria and elsewhere in the region, it’s hard not to wonder what kind of security coordination — if any — still exists, to be withdrawn. On the Husan bypass road just south of Jerusalem that leads to Beitar Illit and other nearby communities, seven people have been injured and 16 vehicles damaged, including several buses, in ongoing terrorist attacks over the past three weeks alone, according to “0404” news.
A day earlier, Abbas met with French President Francois Hollande, who is also deeply unhappy over the Israeli Knesset’s passage Monday night of the Land Normalization Law.
“I want to think that Israel and its government will find an opportunity to reconsider the law,” Hollande told reporters following his meeting with Abbas on Tuesday. “Israel’s expediting colonization of the Palestinian territories due to the adoption of the law will lead to a de-factor annexation of these territories,” Hollande said.
The measure was approved by a vote of 60-52. If it stands, will legalize dozens of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, in which approximately 4,000 Jewish housing units are built. More than half a million Israeli Jews live in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967 and in Judea and Samaria.
Hollande expressed his dismay to Abbas over the new Israeli law, which in any case is about to face a plethora of challenges in the country’s Supreme Court, beginning with two leftist NGOs, Adalah and the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center.
The Palestinian Authority is calling for international sanctions against the Jewish State.