Certainly, Mr. Abbas, who reaffirmed his dedication to nonviolence and stopping terrorism, appeared to carry out hope of a return to negotiations — however with somebody aside from america main the best way.
“Israel has killed Oslo. It has terminated Oslo,” Mr. Abbas stated. “Now we’re an authority with none authority, and an occupation with out land, and we won’t settle for this.”
In a two-hour-plus speech opening a two-day gathering of the Palestine Liberation Group’s Central Council, its second-highest-rating physique, Mr. Abbas delivered broadsides towards Hamas, different Arab leaders and Britain. However he reserved his most scathing phrases for President Trump; the USA’ ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley; and its ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman.
He attacked Mr. Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in defiance of worldwide consensus and longstanding United States coverage; for later declaring, in a Twitter post, that the town’s standing was “off the desk”; for threatening to shut the P.L.O.’s mission in Washington; and for threatening to chop United States help to the Palestinians.
“Rattling your cash!” Mr. Abbas stated of Mr. Trump. “He stated, ‘I will provide you with a peace deal.’ The deal turned out to be a multitude. He stated, ‘We won’t pay for the Palestinians as a result of they stopped the negotiations.’ The place are the negotiations?”
Mr. Abbas additionally confirmed a current New York Times report that the Palestinians had been advised they might be provided the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis, which they already management, because the capital of a future state.
“We’re in a fateful second of historical past,” Mr. Abbas stated, including scornfully: “If we lose Jerusalem, what do you need to do? Have a state with Abu Dis as its capital? That is what they’re providing now: Abu Dis.”
Mr. Abbas stated that Mr. Friedman, a staunch backer of Israeli settlements on the West Financial institution earlier than turning into ambassador, had objected to the phrase occupation out of a conviction that Israel couldn’t occupy its personal land, and had asked the State Department to avoid using the word.
“They requested me to satisfy him,” Mr. Abbas stated. “I stated: ‘Him? No, I gained’t meet him.’ Not right here, not outdoors the nation, in Amman or Washington. I can’t meet this man.”
He additionally referred to as it “shameful” of Ms. Haley to threaten nations that voted in the United Nations General Assembly last month to declare Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem because the Israeli capital “null and void.” The measure handed 128-9 with 35 nations abstaining.
“I hope she hears me,” Mr. Abbas stated, including, in reference to Ms. Haley’s suggestion early final yr that she wore heels to kick Israel’s enemies: “Our response shall be worse, however not with excessive heels.”
“These two are a shame to any administration who respects itself, if it needed to respect itself,” Mr. Abbas added.
The Palestinian Central Council is predicted to make suggestions for a change in technique, however these will probably be nonbinding. An analogous assembly in 2015 resulted in a name to finish safety cooperation with Israel, however Mr. Abbas ignored it.
Addressing a whole lot of P.L.O. members, Mr. Abbas urged the Council to emphasise unification talks aimed toward bringing Hamas, the Islamic militant group that guidelines the Gaza Strip, into the Palestinian fold. “A state with out Gaza isn’t attainable,” he stated. “A state in Gaza isn’t attainable.”
He advocated convening the Palestinian Nationwide Council, the P.L.O.’s legislative physique, which elects the group’s Government Committee and final met in 2009. “The P.L.O. needs to be renovated, needs to be refreshed,” he stated.
And he referred to as on Central Council members to assessment the group’s numerous pacts with Israel, “as a result of the Israeli authorities has led us to a stalemate, so these agreements have to be revisited according to worldwide legal guidelines and resolutions, to guard our official rights.”
Mr. Abbas spent appreciable time early in his speech criticizing Hamas and Islamic Jihad for refusing to ship representatives to the gathering in Ramallah. A Hamas spokesman stated it ought to have been held overseas to make sure the participation of representatives from Hamas and different factions.
Testing his viewers’s consideration, Mr. Abbas additionally gave a prolonged historical past lecture reaching again to the seventeenth century, saying that Oliver Cromwell had first proposed delivery European Jews to the Holy Land, earlier than tracing the start of Zionism to what he referred to as the nineteenth-century journalist and activist Theodor Herzl’s efforts to “wipe out Palestinians from Palestine.”
“This can be a colonial enterprise that has nothing to do with Jewishness,” Mr. Abbas stated. “The Jews have been used as a device beneath the idea of the promised land — name it no matter you need. Every part has been made up.”
Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Trump administration officers provided any instant response.
However Oded Revivi, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents 450,000 Israeli settlers on the West Financial institution, stated, “If the Oslo course of is lifeless, as instructed by Abbas, it will comply with that the Palestinian Authority and its management are irrelevant.”
“It’s time,” Mr. Revivi stated, “to seek out various Palestinian leaders and various peace plans that target constructing bridges between actual individuals on the bottom as an alternative of creating individuals like Abbas wealthy and well-known.”
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