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Tag: Mahmoud Abbas

  • Applause as Abbas slams Israel’s war crimes in address

    Applause as Abbas slams Israel’s war crimes in address

    Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas has addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA) by video after the United States barred Abbas and his senior aides from traveling to New York, even as push for the two-state solution gathers steam at the United Nations.

    The 89-year-old president addressed the UNGA yesterday, slamming Israel’s genocide in Gaza and expansion of illegal settlements in occupied West Bank, three days after France and Saudi Arabia hosted a special summit in which a group of Western nations recognised the State of Palestine.

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    “It’s a war crime and crime against humanity. It will be recorded in history books and the pages of international conscience as a horrific tragedy of the 20 and 21st centuries,” Abbas told the world leaders.

    Abbas said that in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, “the capital of Palestine, the extremist Israeli government continues its illegal settlement expansion and is developing policies for new settlements.”

    He said the E1 project announced by Israel would split the West Bank in two and further occupy East Jerusalem, “undermining the two-state solution.”

  • Jordan urges US not to recognise Jerusalem as Israel capital

    Jordan urges US not to recognise Jerusalem as Israel capital

    Jordan’s foreign minister has warned the United States of “dangerous consequences” if it recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

    Ayman Safadi said he had told U.S Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, such a declaration would trigger great anger in the Arab and Muslim world.

    Speculation is mounting that President Donald Trump will announce the move soon, fulfilling an election pledge, the BBC reports.

    Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, said no decision had yet been made.

    In a tweet, Mr. Safadi said: “Spoke with US Secretary of State Tillerson on dangerous consequences of recognising Jerusalem as capital of Israel. Such a decision would trigger anger across #Arab #Muslim worlds, fuel tension and jeopardise peace efforts.”

    There was no public response from the U.S State Department on the matter.

    Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, is trying to rally international support to persuade Mr. Trump not to make the announcement.

    His office said he made phone calls on Sunday to world leaders including French President, Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

  • Trump says has new reasons to hope for peace in Middle East

    Trump says has new reasons to hope for peace in Middle East

    U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he had new reasons to hope for peace and stability to the Middle East after his visit to Saudi Arabia.

    In a stopover lasting 28 hours, Trump is to meet separately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

    “During my travels in recent days, I have found new reasons for hope,” Trump said in a brief speech on arrival.

    “We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity and peace, but we can only get there working together.

    “There is no other way,” he said.

    Later on Monday, he will pray at Judaism’s Western Wall and visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and on Tuesday he will travel to Bethlehem.

    Netanyahu and his wife Sara, as well as President Reuven Rivlin and members of the Israeli cabinet, were at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport to greet Trump and first lady Melania in a red carpet ceremony after what is believed to have been the first direct flight from Riyadh to Israel.
    Trump’s tour comes in the shadow of difficulties at home, where he is struggling to contain a scandal after firing James Comey as FBI director nearly two weeks ago.

    The trip ends on Saturday after visits to the Vatican, Brussels and Sicily.

    Netanyahu said Israel shared Trump’s commitment to peace, but he also repeated his right-wing government’s political and security demands of the Palestinians, including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

    “May your first trip to our region prove to be a historic milestone on the path towards reconciliation and peace,” Netanyahu said.

    U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters en route to Tel Aviv that any three-way meeting between Trump, Netanyahu and Abbas was for “a later date”.

    Trump has vowed to do whatever is necessary to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, something he has called “the ultimate deal”, but has given little indication of how he could revive negotiations that collapsed in 2014.

    When he met Abbas this month in Washington, he stopped shortly of explicitly recommitting his administration to a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, a long-standing foundation of U.S. policy.

    He has since spoken in support of Palestinian “self-determination”.

    Trump has also opted against an immediate move of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a longtime demand of Israel.

  • Gaza: Abbas, Egypt mull new truce

    Gaza: Abbas, Egypt mull new truce

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hand over to US Secretary of State John Kerry a proposal to end the Gaza crisis in the coming days, Palestinian lawmaker for Fatah Movement Abdullah Abdullah said yesterday.

    Abbas held consultations with the Palestinian leaders and factions as well as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, following which a set of options were reached at, MENA quoted Abdullah as telling the Washington-based Radio Sawa.

    These options will be handed over to Kerry in the coming days and will likely end the Gaza crisis.

    Abdullah, however, denied that the Palestinian proposal included any ideas of demilitarising Gaza Strip, asserting the Palestinians have the right to fight against occupation by all legitimate means.

    Israel wants to eliminate all militants in the coastal enclave, mostly under Palestinian militant group Hamas, while the Hamas seeks end to Israeli occupation and removal of blockades in the conflict-torn Gaza Strip.

    Egypt had called on Israel and the Palestinians to go for ceasefire indefinitely and immediately resume talks in Cairo to reach a permanent ceasefire agreement that ends the ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip.

    Egyptian mediators have proposed a new ceasefire in Gaza that would open the blockaded enclave’s crossings and allow in aid and reconstruction materials, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.

    The Palestinians, including the de facto Hamas rulers of the enclave, would be willing to accept such a deal if Israel does, the official told AFP.

    The proposal would defer to a later date negotiations on disputed points that have prevented a long-term ceasefire deal, he added.

    An Egyptian official confirmed that mediators have contacted the Palestinians and Israel with a new proposal.

     

  • Abbas swears in Palestinian unity government

    Abbas swears in Palestinian unity government

    A new Palestinian unity government has been sworn in, marking a key step towards ending a major rift between factions in the West Bank and Gaza.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed the event, saying “a black page in history has been turned forever”.

    The two sides had governed separately since Hamas, which won elections in 2006, ousted Fatah from Gaza in 2007.

    Israel says it will not deal with a Palestinian government backed by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

    Israel suspended crisis-hit pevace talks with the Palestinians in April in response to the announcement of the reconciliation deal.

    Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel and other countries, opposes the peace talks, though President Abbas has said the new government will abide by previous agreements.

    The new government comprises 17 politically independent ministers and will be tasked with organising elections to be held within six months.

    It is headed by incumbent Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

    The ministers took the oath of office in a televised ceremony at President Abbas’ compound in Ramallah.

    “Today, with the formation of a national consensus government, we announce the end of a Palestinian division that has greatly damaged our national case,” said President Abbas.

    “This black page in history has been turned forever.”

    As the new administration took office, the Hamas government in Gaza resigned.

    Hamas’ outgoing Prime Minister Ismail Haniya welcomed the new cabinet as “a government of one people and one political system”.

    “We’re leaving the government, but not the nation. We’re leaving the ministries but not the question of the nation,” he said.

    Three Gaza-based members of the new government were denied permission by Israel to cross into the West Bank for the ceremony.

    Israel tightly controls who exits Gaza into its territory as part of what it says are security measures to prevent attacks.

    President Abbas’ decision to reconcile with Hamas has been denounced by Israel. Its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged world leaders not to “rush to recognise” the new government.

    “Hamas is a terrorist organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction, and the international community must not embrace it. That would not bolster peace, it would strengthen terror,” he told a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

     

  • Israel transfers Palestinian funds

    Israel transfers Palestinian funds

    Palestinian public sector workers received their salaries yesterday, Palestinian officials said, in a sign that Israel had backed down from a threat to impose sanctions as peace talks began to collapse last month.

    Israel had said on April 10 it would withhold funds after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a series of international human rights conventions he hoped would allow Palestinians to eventually challenge Israel at the United Nations, which recognized Palestine as a non-member state in 2012.

    U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations ended on April 29 with no breakthrough.

    Palestinian officials said the payment reflected Israel’s decision to transfer more than $100 million in customs duties it collects on goods headed to Palestinian-run areas through border crossings it controls.

     

    The money accounts for about two-thirds of the Palestinian budget and is key to keeping its large public sector functioning and maintaining stability in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    Israel had said it would dock payment of over $100 million it said the Palestinian government owed it in utility bills.

    Israeli officials could not be immediately reached for comment during a national holiday.

    Speaking last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah told reporters Israel would be paying the near usual monthly amount of 450 million shekels ($130.3 million) and only deducting 20 million shekels ($5.8 million) as part of a loan taken out by a previous Palestinian government.

    Palestinians say their economy cannot reach its full potential while it remains under partial Israeli control. They seek an independent state in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

    Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials say they hope to revive peace talks given the right conditions.

     

  • Mahmoud Abbas’s U.N. gambit

    Mahmoud Abbas’s U.N. gambit

    ONE OF THE winners in last week’s protests outside U.S. embassies in the Middle East was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Before the eruption of outrage over an anti-Muslim film, Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad had faced a week of demonstrations and strikes in the West Bank that some were starting to compare to the revolts against other autocratic Arab rulers. Thanks to the eruption of anti-Americanism and Mr. Fayyad’s timely repeal of several recent price and tax increases, the opposition movement appears to have subsided for now. But one way or another, Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority appears headed for trouble.

    The 76-year-old president has been digging himself into a political hole since early last year, when he announced a new strategy of seeking recognition of Palestinian statehood by the United Nations and a reconciliation deal with the rival Hamas movement. The recognition bid flopped last fall in the U.N. Security Council, where the Palestinians failed to obtain even the eight votes needed for a simple majority. Meanwhile, talks with Hamas stalled, and long-overdue elections, promised for last May, were once again put off.

    During this time Mr. Abbas has mostly refused negotiations with Israel, citing as a pretext the continued construction in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Israel has offered the Palestinian Authority a number of concessions in exchange for renewing the peace process, including prisoner releases and a potentially lucrative natural gas concession. But Mr. Abbas has not agreed.

    Instead, as the West Bank demonstrations were reaching a crescendo, Mr. Abbas held a news conference in Ramallah on Sept. 8 and confirmed that he will renew the U.N. initiative, this time by seeking a vote in the General Assembly upgrading the Palestinians’ status to that of a non-member observer state. Palestinian officials say the new status might allow them to join more U.N. bodies and to bring actions against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

    However, the vote would not create a state — and it might put an end to Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. Israel would probably stop providing the tax funds that pay for two-thirds of the authority’s budget; Congress, which has already held up $200 million in funding because of last year’s U.N. initiative, could block all American aid. That would worsen the economic crunch, caused by a loss of foreign funding, that has prompted the strikes and demonstrations Mr. Abbas is seeking to defuse. Not just the Obama administration but also friendly Arab governments, such as that of Jordan, have counseled Mr. Abbas that the push for recognition would be self-defeating.

    The Palestinian leader seems to have left himself some wiggle room: He says the push for recognition will begin with “consultations” with other U.N. members after his Sept. 27 speech to the assembly. Other Palestinian officials have hinted that the “consultations” may be prolonged; Mr. Abbas might hope that he can extract concessions from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, after the Nov. 6 election, from President Obama, were he to win, in exchange for dropping the initiative. But to what end? As Jordan’s foreign minister recently pointed out, negotiations with Israel are the only realistic path to Palestinian statehood. Mr. Abbas’s refusal to accept that fact might prove to be his undoing.

    – Washington Post