AJC: President Abbas, in UN Speech, Undermines Peace Prospects Yet Again

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Sep 26, 2014, 04:22 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's address to the UN General Assembly a rhetorical cocktail of hatred, deceit and distortion. Once again, as in his previous UN speeches, Abbas undermined prospects for advancing peace.

"President Abbas today offered no fresh ideas, indeed no hope for peace," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "Recycling well-worn and false accusations against Israel, ignoring the damage caused by his terrorist partner Hamas, playing to the rejectionist crowd, and pressing for UN intervention are not exactly the road to a two-state settlement and coexistence. Indeed, today Abbas took himself and the Palestinian people another step down into the abyss of failed peacemaking."

In his speech, Abbas repeatedly called Israel "the racist occupying State," which he accused of launching a "war of genocide" against the Palestinian people, even as the Palestinians have one of the highest population growth rates in the world. He did not utter a word of criticism of Hamas, which triggered the summer conflict by kidnapping and murdering three Israelis and firing endless volleys of rockets and missiles at Israel. Indeed, he managed to deliver his entire speech without once mentioning Hamas by name.

While Abbas repeatedly charged that Israel "refuses to end its occupation" of Palestine, in reality Israeli leaders have persistently sought to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict, including by leaving Gaza in 2005, and then by pursuing direct talks with the PA to reach a permanent accord on the West Bank.

Abbas announced that a resolution to "push forward the efforts to achieve peace" would soon be introduced to the UN Security Council.

"President Abbas knows well, even if today he acted as if he doesn't, that there's only one address for peace, and that's the office of Israel's prime minister in Jerusalem," said Harris. "And President Abbas knows that it was he, not Israel, who summarily ended the latest peace talks in April by rejecting Secretary of State Kerry's efforts to extend them, and instead chose to forge a national unity government with Hamas."

Abbas also outrageously equated what he calls Israeli "state terrorism" with the terrorism of ISIS.

Harris concluded: "For those who aspire to achieve peace based on a two-state agreement, President Abbas's UN speech today will long stand out as one of the biggest disappointments of this world gathering. There was absolutely nothing, I repeat nothing, constructive or compelling about it. Rather, it was the work of a verbal arsonist, who, tragically, sabotaged the vital quest for peace."

SOURCE American Jewish Committee