Abbas: We'll file complaint if Israel refuses to talk

[dayag]

This is rich. Israel is more than willing to return to the negotiating table. It is the Palestinians who are making preconditions, demanding that Israel give in to all their demands before negotiations even begin!

They can file complaints all day long but if they want to see any change to their current condition they need to return to the negotiating table and be willing to make reasonable compromises.

According to Abbas, the letter states that If Israel is not willing to return to the negotiating table, the Palestinian Authority will file a complaint with international bodies.

"Israel must accept international legitimacy and stop construction in the settlements," Abbas said in Cairo.

He said that in the letter, the PA leadership wrote to Netanyahu: "You have made the PA a non-authority. You have taken away from the PA all its commitments and what it was doing and supervising. Now we have been left with nothing."

source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...211549,00.html

[dayag]

Abbas is leading his people to disaster with his refusal to negotiate peace.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas renewed his threat on Sunday to unilaterally seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state if Israel did not accept his conditions for resuming the peace process...

They have never ended their attempt to get the UN to recognize them as an independent state. Given the U.S. veto threat in the Security Council this is an empty threat.

He added that there would be no resumption of the peace talks unless Israel halted settlement activities in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, accepted the June 4, 1967 lines as the future borders of a Palestinian state and released Palestinian prisoners...

The Palestinians are only hurting themselves with their preconditions.

...Israel is prepared for peace talks with the Palestinians where all the core issues will be on the agenda; Israel places no pre-conditions whatsoever on entering the talks; an agreement reached must contain Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and include effective security arrangements...

If the Palestinians don't recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and agree to effective security arrangements, then they are showing that they are not willing to end the conflict. Israel is under no obligation under international law to create an independent state dedicated to Israel's destruction.

source: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPol...aspx?id=265316

[dayag]

The Palestinians were hoping the Quartet would endorse their intransigence by blaming Israeli settlement activity for derailing the peace process. Instead the Quartet renewed their call for direct talks without preconditions!

The Quartet issued a statement Wednesday using well worn language regarding the settlements, but stopped well short of Palestinian hopes that it would blame settlement construction for the impasse in the diplomatic process.

The last paragraph of the 11-paragraph Quartet statement "expressed concern about unilateral and provocative actions by either party, including continued settlement activity, which cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations, the only way to a just and durable solution to the conflict."...

A day before the meeting, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Quartet should publicly hold Israel responsible for derailing the peace process...

The Prime Minister's Office issued a communiqué welcoming the Quartet statement "calling for a continuation of direct talks without pre-conditions." Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the communiqué said, will suggest to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad -- when they meet next week -- that the level of talks between the two sides be upgraded, and that he meet directly with PA President Mahmoud Abbas...

source: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPol...aspx?id=265766