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Palestinian president Abbas sets conditions for resuming peace talks

You can read the full report here: Al Arabiya news channel

First published: december 15, 2009

The Palestinians will demand a United Nations resolution declaring that all lands seized by Israel in 1967 are occupied territory because of stalled peace talks, which will only resume if Israel halts settlement building, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas

“We will say to the Security Council that we want a resolution based on previous resolutions that the occupied territories are the lands occupied in 1967,” Abbas told his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

“Israel accuses us of acting unilaterally but they act unilaterally every day,” he added, during a meeting of the umbrella organization aimed at deciding whether to extend parliamentary and presidential mandates past Jan. 24, when they run out and with no new elections set.

“Why are we doing this? Because the negotiations have stopped. Why have they stopped? Because Israel cannot stop the settlements or recognize international law.”

Israel last month agreed to a 10-month moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank after months of American pressure, but the Palestinians have said it is not sufficient for restarting peace negotiations.

Abbas said the freeze ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not sufficient, since it was only a partial halt to construction and Israel was now pouring more money into the settler communities.

“When Israel stops settlement activity for a specific period and when it recognizes the borders we are calling for, and these are the legal borders, there would be nothing to prevent us from going to negotiations to complete what we agreed to at Annapolis,” Abbas told the PLO legislature in Ramallah.

“A return to violence? I won’t accept it,” he said.

Abbas, who is under pressure from the United States and the European Union to resume talks that have been frozen for the past year, said he was not setting terms but simply reiterating Israel’s obligations under the “road map” agreement for talks.

It was Israel that was setting pre-conditions by insisting that Jerusalem would be excluded from negotiations and that settlement expansion would continue, he said.

The PLO council began a two-day meeting which was expected to extend the term of Abbas and endorse his opposition to re-starting negotiations with Israel unless it first halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Albawaba news agency, Abbas also “…criticized the talks aimed at releasing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, noting that the Palestinian people have paid, until now, 2587 martyrs, 20.000 houses, and thousands of casualties as a price for the imprisonment of this soldier.”

Read more on the UN Security Council Resolution 242 about the 1967 borders.

Mazzeltov,

Crethi Plethi

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