"LandepNews"
Abbas and Netanyahu
His comments came as a result of the talks held in Washington between the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American president Barack Obama, and who were focused on the Iranian matter, with no approach on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Obama promised to broker at some point in his term in office.
During these meetings, the Israeli-Palestinian matter was addressed by the American president as he made passing references in the speech given to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Saeb Erekat said that Netanyahu went to America to push for a plan of war, not a plan of peace, and added that the only way to solve all the conflicts in the region is to address the most pressing matter, the one of the Palestinians.
The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said for his part that he would consult Israeli PM’s position on the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian foreign minister said that the president of the Palestinian Authority would send a letter in which he would make clear that Israel did not fulfil its obligations under current agreements, and that peace talks would be decided only after Israel has taken the steps indicated in the letter for the resumption of the negotiations.
The foreign minister said that it is expected that Israel would play down the letter and resume to make a few comments on it.
The Palestinian Authority is waiting for the United Nations Security Council to respond to the demand to send representatives in the Palestinian territories to assess the situation. Abbas is said to have updated the Arab League about his intention to send the letter.
Last month, Abbas delivered a speech in Qatar, on which occasion he said that Israel was trying to erase the Arab, Muslim and Christian nature of Jerusalem, and compared Israel’s control over Jerusalem to the Roman and Crusader occupations of the city that is deemed holy by all three monotheistic religions.
Abbas also cast doubt on the existence of the Temple of Jerusalem, and accused Israel of attempting to hurt the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu retorted angrily that Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jews for millenia and that under the Israel’s administration it would continue to be opened to all faiths. He reminded that there is complete freedom of worship in Jerusalem and that the state would protect the exercise of all religions.
According to a report of Al-Arabiya the Palestinian Authority has set a few conditions for the resumption of the negotiations, the most important of which being the complete halt of settlements, including in East Jerusalem.
Another condition is the acceptance by Israel of the 1967 borders of the Palestinian state, with the possibility of a limited territorial swap. The release of the Palestinians from the Israeli prisons is also among the conditions, as cited by Haaretz, which is quoting the Al-Arabiya.
The conditions will be reviewed by the United States, and then will arrive to Israel through Jordan, which has acted as liaison and venue for the negotiations held at the beginning of the year, under the authority of the Middle East Quartet, which demanded that they be resumed in order for a solution to the crisis be found.
The Middle East Quartet’s role increased after the Palestinian bid for independence in September 2011 by the United Nations Security Council, which was considered a unilateral proclamation of independence, without consultations with Israel.
Israel wants the Palestinians to offer them the recognition of Israel as a state, and the recognition of its right to exist on the territory it occupies, and security guarantees for the future state, which would be surrounded by enemy states, and would have a very small territory to mount a defense on, which is why it is determined to maintain a military presence in the West Bank colonies it has created since 1967, when it invaded the zone pretending that it had been deserted by the Jordanian authorities on the occasion of the Arab-Israeli war.
The Palestinians desire their state to comprise the territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as they were before the war in 1967, and to have East Jerusalem as capital of their nation. They also desire the settlement of the problem of the refugees that had to leave their land when the Israeli state was established. They also oppose any military presence on the future state of Palestine.
The first round of renewed negotiations happened in September 2010, after Israel imposed a 10-month settlement freeze in the West Bank. After two rounds, one in Washington, DC, and another in the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh, the negotiations were dropped as the freeze came to an end on September 26.
All attempts to resume negotiations were foiled by Abbas’s determination not to resume them for as long as the Israelis were building in the West Bank.
After almost a year of stalemate, the Palestinian Authority went to the United Nations Security Council to demand that Palestine become the 194th nation of the world. The bid came after numerous attempts to prevent it on the Israeli and American part. The Americans promised that it would not pass the UNSC, because they would veto it, if need be.
It was not necessary to come to this point, because the bid did not obtain enough votes so that the veto be needed.
Under the circumstances, Abbas attempted to open a third front, and engaged in talks with the Hamas, so that the Palestinian people be speaking in one voice. It was agreed that the next elections would see common lists of candidates in the two territories.
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