[ 18/09/2011 - 12:54 PM ]
TEHRAN, (PIC)-- Ramadan Shallah, secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) downplayed the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s UN bid for state recognition, calling it the result of the PA’s “sense of failure” in the peace process with Israel.
“The decision-maker in negotiations should have instead referred to the Palestinians to agree on a new strategy in harmony with movements on the ‘Arab street’,” Shallah said during the International Conference on Islamic Awakening held in the Iranian capital Tehran.
Shallah emphasized his objection to talks of the Palestinian state being reserved to 1967 borders, adding that “to us, Palestine is the entire Palestine … and Jerusalem is its capital”.
In a separate statement, the Palestinian Freedom Movement (Ahrar) said that Abbas’s speech on Friday affirming that he would go ahead with the UN application entailed a message of reassurance to the Israeli occupation authorities.
The statement also asserts that the Palestinian Liberation Organization, in its current form, does not represent all Palestinians.
Some of the risks involved in the UN bid are that Israel would be given control of 78 percent of the historic Palestinian territories and the refugees’ right of return would be relinquished.
Political analyst Wassam Afifa said Abbas’s speech on Friday was aimed at salvaging him from the failed peace process.
“September (when the UN bid would take place) is a ‘rest station’ for a negotiator: he is thereby able to preoccupy Israel and the Palestinians in wait of developments,” Afifa said in an interview with the Palestinian information center, noting that Abbas wanted to resume negotiations instead of the UN bid.
He also highlighted that Abbas’s statements on peace talks with Israel have been conflicting, as he has sometimes pronounced them as failed, but he has also stated that he wanted to resume the talks.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
1 comment:
So what is the final settlement? Such a settlement must...give the Palestinian people a sovereign, uncontested, independent state of their own. This is a matter of justice and practicality.
Territorial integrity and contiguity. Any further dissection of Palestinian territory would make it politically and economically impossible to maintain a state. There can be no civilian pockets under Israeli rule on Palestinian land.
A sovereign capital in Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is Palestine’s historical, spiritual and commercial heart. To exclude it from a Palestinian state is unthinkable...
Justice and fairness for refugees. As a matter of principle, the Palestinians right to return or be compensated for their lost homes and land is nonnegotiable...Israel must acknowledge the suffering and hardship Palestinian refugees have faced as a result of their eviction from their homeland, and must assist in their rehabilitation and reabsorption.
It was our nationalism...which drew the country into an occupation and settlement of the West Bank...None of the leaders of the Labor movement believed that the Palestinians deserved the same right [as Jews] because none of them believed in universal rights.
Pretending, like [Arthur] Hertzberg and others do, that the Occupation and the colonial situation created in the last thirty years was merely the product of the Arab refusal to recognize Israel, is no more than looking for an alibi and falsifying history.
Post a Comment