* In the same interview he yielded to the Israeli precondition of "demilitarizing" any future state of Palestine, thus compromising the sovereignty of such a state beforehand. Ignoring the facts that Israel is a nuclear power, a state of weapons of mass destruction, the regional military superpower and the world's forth military exporter, he asked: "Do you think we have any illusion that we can have any security if the Israelis do not feel they have security?"
* Further compromising the sovereignty of any future state of Palestine, Abbas, according to the Times interview, has proposed to US Secretary Kerry that an American-led NATO force, not a UN force, patrol a future Palestinian state "indefinitely, with troops positioned throughout the territory, at all crossings, and within Jerusalem;" he seemed insensitive to the fact that his people would see such a force with such a mandate as merely the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) operating under the NATO flag and in its uniforms.
* Abbas even agreed that the IOF "could remain in the West Bank for up to five years" -- and not three as he had recently stated -- provided that "Jewish settlements" are "phased out of the new Palestinian state along a similar timetable."
* Not all "Jewish settlements" however. Very well aware of international law, which prohibits the transfer of people by an occupying power like Israel from or to the occupied territories, Abbas nonetheless had early enough accepted the principle of proportional land swapping whereby the major colonial settlements, mainly within Greater Jerusalem borders, which are home to some eighty percent of more than half a million illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank, would be annexed to Israel. This concession is tantamount to accepting the division of the West Bank between its Palestinian citizens and its illegal settlers.
* Yet, what Abbas had described as the "historic," "very difficult," "courageous" and "painful" concession Palestinians had already made dates back very much earlier, when the Palestine National Council adopted in 1988 the Declaration of Independence, which was based on the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution No. 181 (II) of 29 November 1947; then "we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967," he told the UNGA in September 2011.
* Accordingly, Abbas repeatedly voices his commitment to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which stipules an "agreed upon" solution of the "problem" of the 1948 Palestinian refugees. Israel is on record that the return of these refugees to their homes according to the UNGA resolution No. 194 (III) of December 11, 1948 is a non-negotiable redline, thus rendering any such "agreed upon" solution a mission impossible. Abbas concession to such a solution is in fact compromising the inalienable rights of more than half of the Palestinian population.
On September 29, 2012, Abbas "once again" repeated "our warning" to the UNGA: "The window of opportunity is narrowing and time is quickly running out. The rope of patience is shortening and hope is withering."
Out of Conviction, Not out of Options
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