Palestinian Authority rejects calls to postpone statehood bid
RT,
24
November, 2012
Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas says he intends on pressing forward with a
statehood bid at the United Nations next week. He has turned down
requests from the US, Britain, Germany and France to delay the bid.
Abbas
will formally request that the UN General Assembly upgrade the
Palestinian Authority’s (PA) status from observer to nonmember
state on November 29. The Assembly will be asked to vote on the
measure.
“There
is nothing that stops us from obtaining the status of non-member
observer…we are sure that the countries of the free world will
support us,” Abbas
said in a statement.
Palestinian
officials told Al-Ayyam news that they hoped the recent Israeli
Defense Forces operation in Gaza would encourage countries to vote in
favor of upgrading the PA's status.
Officials
said they would spend the coming days attempting to persuade European
Union governments to vote in favor of the bid. The PA is, however,
expecting most EU countries to abstain during the vote.
The
PA said it expects the Assembly to vote two-thirds in favor of
granting the PA nonmember status.
Unsurprisingly,
the US is not expected to be part of that two-thirds bloc.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said earlier this week that US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Abbas that
Palestinians “would
destroy themselves politically” by
pressing forward with the bid.
Last
year, the US used its veto power to block a similar Palestinian
statehood bid at the UN Security Council. However, no country has
veto power in the General Assembly.
Erekat
has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of undermining
the PA in order to maintain control of the West Bank, while trying to
push Gaza politically closer to Egypt.
“To
stop this strategy, the only avenue is to go to the UN, and place
Palestine as a geographic entity, as a state,"Erekat
told AP.
Hana
Amireh, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Executive
Committee, said that the statehood bid has become “very
urgent” after
Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. She said the
assault “mobilized
widespread support for the Palestinians.”
The
IDF operation ended on Wednesday with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.
The assault led to the deaths of 166 Palestinians, mostly unarmed
civilians and women and children, and six Israelis.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.