Ramallah: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to present an initiative yesterday to the Palestinian leadership that, people close to him said, would bypass UN-brokered negotiations with Israel that have failed for many years to produce a separate Palestinian state.
Instead he will call for an international conference or UN resolution demanding a deadline to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. As leverage, Abbas would join the International Criminal Court and other institutions where he has long threatened to pursue Israeli violations, the sources said.
The initiative has reportedly won the backing of Arab states, Western states and Russia.
Under Abbas’s initiative, the borders of a future Palestinian state would be controlled by a third party. Abbas also wants to set a specific timeline for the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops from the West Bank. After a visit to Egypt last week, Abbas surprised everyone by announcing that he would reveal an all-inclusive deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all.
The initiative could also see the Palestinian National Authority dismantled.
The proposal has been rejected across the political spectrum in Israel.
Justice Minister and Chief Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni told the Walla News that Abbas “will have to understand a Palestinian state will not be established in UN institutions.”
She added that Abbas’s unilateral decision and unnecessary steps were a public relations move.
Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid highlighted the importance of a diplomatic process saying to the Israeli Army Radio, “Recent weeks have reminded us why we should separate from the Palestinians — we do not want to live with them.”
Egypt, Israel and the United States have all said for weeks that strengthening Abbas and reinstating his security forces on Gaza’s borders was a goal of cease-fire negotiations in Cairo, but Hamas, has yet to accede to these and other conditions.
Now, Abbas’s allies said they hoped to seize on the Gaza crisis and diplomatic stalemate to press for a fresh approach to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and to show the public that he is at the helm.
“This is exactly our moment, like it was the moment of the European Jews after the Holocaust, when they said, ‘Never again.’ This is our ‘never again,’” Husam Zomlot, a senior foreign-policy official in Abbas’ Fatah faction told the New York Times.
“This is the time to really operate. We either operate or we let the patient die, and the patient here is the two-state solution. We cannot just put bandages.”
