RAMALLAH, May 25, 2011 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of moving very far from the peace process.
Abbas, speaking at the opening of a meeting for the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to respond to US President Barack Obama’s speeche last week, said that Netanyahu, speaking at a joint session of the US Congress on Tuesday, “has shown us, in addition to the many mistakes and distortions, that he moved very far from the peace process.”
He said, “There was nothing that we could build positively on. We look at his speech negatively.”
Abbas stressed that the Palestinian reconciliation, which Netanyahu and Obama have asked Abbas to negate, is “a major Palestinian interest that we should complete and implement.”
He said that what came in Obama’s speech regarding the borders of the Palestinian state on the 1967 lines and which will have borders with Jordan, Egypt and Israel as “something we can deal positively with.”
He said that Netanyahu’s speech “had many errors and bigger distortions. He moved very far from the peace process.”
Abbas said Netanyahu had solutions to all the issues, “even before negotiations had started.”
He said negotiations should be based on international references, including UN resolutions and the quartet statements. “There should be an end to these negotiations. We cannot have negotiations that continue forever. There should be terms of reference to these negotiations that will deal with the final status,” he said.
“We cannot accept that the solutions are put before the negotiations end,” he said.
Abbas said that if by September negotiations do not go anywhere, in spite of the fact that they are his first choice, he will go the United Nations in September to ask for recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
Abbas pointed out that going to the UN “is not intended to isolate Israel, nor to delegitimize it and it is neither a unilateral act.”
He said he will take these Palestinian thoughts to the Arab League follow-up committee, which is meeting on Saturday in Qatar, to get an Arab response to Obama and Netanyahu’s speechs.
M.A.
