(Archive)
27/08/2010 A day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged Israel to take advantage of “this historic opportunity” to achieve peace via the imminent direct negotiations, Hamas and 10 other Palestinian resistance groups on Thursday demanded that he resign because of his “failure to resist heavy American and Israeli pressure” to abandon his preconditions for the talks.
The resignation call was issued following a meeting of the groups’ heads in Damascus.
Izzat Risheq, a Hamas representative who attended the meeting, said participants agreed that Abbas “was no longer trustworthy to look after the interests of the Palestinian people and should therefore quit all his positions.”
Speaking during a meal he held to mark the breaking of Wednesday’s Ramadan fast, Abbas declared that the Palestinians were entering the direct talks on September 2 of their own volition and with the hope of achieving peace with their neighbors.
“We are going to Washington to launch direct talks under the sponsorship of the US and the presence of a representative of the Quartet of our own volition and national sense because we want peace,” Abbas told his guests over the meal in his Mukata presidential compound in Ramallah.Referring to the PA’s previous conditions for participating in direct talks with Israel, Abbas explained: “As Palestinians, we’re not in a position that allows us to impose preconditions. No party should be allowed to set preconditions before entering negotiations.”
He added that the issue of settlement construction was mentioned in all bilateral agreements between the Israelis and Palestinians and in most international accords. “Since the Oslo Accords, we agreed that neither party would take measures that would prejudice the outcome of the final-status negotiations,” Abbas said.
“This means that Israel would refrain from changing the reality on the ground, while the Palestinians would refrain from unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state.”
ISRAELI POLITICIANS TO FIGHT FREEZE AT SCHOOLS
Meanwhile, the first day of school date has now become Israeli political fodder.
September 1 will coincide with a White House dinner marking the long-awaited beginning of direct diplomatic negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas under the auspices of US President Barack Obama.
Politicians on the Right intend to use the day to send a message to Netanyahu that the construction moratorium in Judea and Samaria must end as scheduled on September 26 and to Obama that continuing the freeze would harm West Bank children.
At the request of the Knesset’s Land of Israel caucus, ministers and top MKs will spend the day visiting schools in the West Bank.
Asked whether the visits of the Israeli ministers to the settlements while he is in Washington would bother Netanyahu, a source close to the Israeli PM said, “The ministers have the right to express their views, especially in this case, when they are not different from those of the prime minister.”
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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