Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas warned of “the catastrophic danger of the racist Israeli settlement of our country, Palestine,” in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.
In a sprawling and direct speech at the UN, Abbas, President of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, described persistent Israeli crimes in the occupied West Bank and called for an end to what he described as “a campaign of ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes,” and their potential to eliminate Palestine and any chance for peaceful settlement.
“Israel, the occupying Power, has persisted with its settlement campaign,” Abbas said, which is “a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people via the demolition of their homes and prevention of their construction; the revocation of residency rights; the denial of basic services, especially with regard to construction of school; the closure of institutions; and the impoverishment of Jerusalem’s community via a siege of walls and checkpoints that are choking the City and preventing millions of Palestinians from freely accessing its mosques, churches, schools, hospitals and markets.”
“During the past months,” Abbas continued, “attacks by terrorist militias of Israeli settlers have become a daily reality, with at least 535 attacks perpetrated since the beginning of this year,” adding that “our people have become fixed targets for acts of killing and abuse with the complete collusion of the occupying forces and the Israeli Government.”
Abbas called on the international community to “compel” Israel “to respect the Geneva Conventions, to lift the blockade of Gaza and to investigate the conditions of detention of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, stressing the need for their release.”
Abbas put it plainly when he said that there can only be one understanding of Israeli policy: “that the Israeli Government rejects the two-State solution.” Indeed, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party Charter declares Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza “the realization of Zionist values” and that the whole of the West Bank and Jerusalem belong to Israel.
Abbas pointed to the possibilities of peace based on the agreement signed 19 years ago, the Oslo Declaration of Principles, “a compromise by which the Palestinian people accepted to establish their State on only 22% of the territory of historic Palestine for the sake of making peace.”
Israel is pursuing “a policy of war, occupation and settlement colonization,” that “is promising the Palestinian people a new catastrophe, a new Nakba.”
Abbas cited Palestine’s successful acceptance into the UN agency UNESCO last year as what kind of progress is possible when there is no veto power, indicating the destructive influence of the veto power of the United States at the Security Council, something that has repeatedly prevented a viable peace to the conflict.
Concluding, Abbas said “we do not seek to delegitimize an existing State – that is Israel; but rather to assert the State that must be realized – that is Palestine.”
Wiyh all the war crimes against the Palestinian people and america complicit and party too uses her veto to drag the Palestinians into utter hopelesness just how can any sane person look kindly on america only with unmitigated hatred.
Good question, good points. And our "relationship" with Israel (as in the tale of the scorpion and the frog) has created many problems and losses for the US. But the world has seen this problem before — and understands it at the same time. What do you do with the scorpion? He has a right to exist too, and as long as he does he will sting the frog and sink them both — because he can't help being what he is.
Good point, well made. And few are left in the world who look on us kindly, many hate and will hate us as long as they have memories, but many are in the same boat, too, owned by the banks and oppressed by the same network, so to speak, including those without honor among themselves. Israel continues to commit atrocities against the Palestinians, the internet show it slowly seeking to degrade and exterminate them, and what does the world do? Israel has betrayed its friends, not unlike the scorpion who betrays the frog in the folk tale about the two. The frog asks the scorpion why it has done this to him, as they both will die, and the scorpion replies that it can't help being what it is.
Perhaps there is something in the frog that is willing to play the part it does, and something in the scorpion willing to die in order to kill them both. Etc.
Israel would like to criminalize free speech regarding any criticism of itself, but it will denigrate and degrade others and does. One definition of wrongdoing is doing to someone else what one wouldn't want done to himself.
Instead of holding Israel and those Americans who support it entirely responsible, perhaps the rest of us should see these events as opportunities to refuse to be defeated, refuse to worship mammon, to stand up for our optimum survival (not just physical survival), to refuse to be bullied down, to educate ourselves, to insist on the right to think for ourselves, to begin to be honest from the ground up.
etc. etc.
What an boring antisemite Mr.Abbas to repeat the truth which everyone knows.But the "free world"will say that Palestinian people don't exist or that they don't want peace or that they refuse to meet Israeli and world leader Bibi.
"Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity…."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen
Yeah right – that's going to happen by the end of the year. Promise…