to extend a moratorium on new Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Israel has rejected the Palestinian bid, saying peace can only be achieved through negotiations, not a unilateral declaration of statehood.
US president Barack Obama, echoed these sentiments in a meeting with Abbas on Wednesday, saying UN action would not achieve a Palestinian state and the United States would veto any Security Council move to recognise Palestinian statehood, the White House said. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas formally submitted an application to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon requesting the General Assembly recognise a Palestinian state.
In his speech, Abbas drew attention to the death, destruction and humiliation carried out by Israel during what he described as “63-years of suffering”
While his speech won enthusiastic applause at the UN session, those in the audience are well aware of this suffering, having stood by and allowed Israel – a settler colony that is not recognised by over 20 UN member states including Zimbabwe – to blatantly flout one UN resolution after another. They were equally aware, however, of the dangers of the US’ stated intention to veto the application on the Security Council, and the campaign of threats and intimidation it has conducted to get other countries to fall into line.
Washington’s position in the Middle East has been gravely weakened by the mass uprisings in the Arab World that have led to the ouster of its long-term allies, Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The use of its veto against the Palestinians would further compromise the position of the major powers and their beleaguered allies in Egypt and Jordan, whose support for Israel has already led to mass demonstrations calling for the expulsion of Israel’s ambassadors, the repudiation of their treaties with Israel, and the evacuation of Israel’s embassy staff for their own safety.
Abbas’ statement, therefore, was also intended as a warning that continued blatant UN complicity in the on-going oppression of the Palestinians would expose imperialist pretensions to be the ally of the “Arab Spring” and would fan the flames of revolution.
His remarks are a tacit admission to the bankruptcy of the US-brokered “peace process,” which for more than two decades has been used a cover for Israel to strengthen its occupation of Palestinian land and suppress its people, with the aid of Washington. They also made clear that Abbas’s efforts to accommodate Israel – revealed so graphically in the “Palestine Papers” published by Al Jazeera earlier this year – had gravely undermined his own credibility and that of his Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
The application for statehood was the result of Israel’s repeated failure to negotiate in accordance with the 1993 Oslo Accords that had set out plans for a future Palestinian state, Abbas said. Nor had anything changed under US President Barack Obama.
Talks begun last September in Washington – involving the Quartet (the US, UN, European Union and Russia) along with Egypt and Jordan – had set out plans for a peace agreement within one year. These had broken down within days, however, after Israel refused to extend even a temporary freeze on settlement construction on land that would be part of the future Palestinian state.
The occupation was now “racing against time to redraw the borders on our land . . . that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine,” Abbas said. This was part of a “multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing.”
At the same time, Israel “continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling, persisting with its war of aggression of three years ago on Gaza, which resulted in massive destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques, and the thousands of martyrs and wounded.”
Abbas also pointed to what he described as “the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army.” These are perpetrating “frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes, schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees.
“Despite our repeated warnings, the occupying Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the crimes of the settlers.”
Israel was also trying to introduce new condition for negotiations, through its demand for recognition as a Jewish state. This would lead to the transfer of Palestinian Israelis out of Israel, Abbas said, warning that this will “transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into”
Abbas has no alternative to the machinations of Israel, the US and the imperialist powers. His apocalyptic warnings are intended at pushing ahead with the very negotiations he criticised, and he made clear he would resume talks as soon as Israel halted settlement construction.

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