Netanyahu reportedly heard in return that other representatives at the gathering “thanked him and Israel for its cooperation in so many fields”.
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“This remains the core of the conflict”, Netanyahu said, speaking after Abbas on the third day of the General Debate. And he invited his Palestinian counterpart to address the Israeli parliament, saying he would “gladly” speak at the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah if invited.It was unclear if his offer was meant seriously.
Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington and one of Netanyahu’s most trusted advisers, said as much last week just before Israel and the United States signed a defense assistance agreement that guarantees Israel $38 billion over the next 10 years.
The UN, Netanyahu observed, had gone from “moral force” to “moral farce”.
Slamming Israel’s “abhorrent” settlement policy, Abbas demanded the United Nations take a bigger role in the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Israel’s diplomatic relations are undergoing nothing less than a revolution”.
“The Palestinian youth listening to his speech today, will be the terrorists of tomorrow”, Danon said.
Netanyahu added that Israeli cities Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv were “the real settlements they are after”.
Netanyahu predicted that the era of automatic condemnations of Israel at the United Nations was coming to an end.
“All of these Israeli policies, actions and measures are the reasons for the failure of all worldwide efforts, particularly that of the global quartet for the past 13 years, just as Israel has sabotaged the efforts of successive American administrations over the decades”, he said.
The approvals mostly involved new housing units, but a retroactive green light was also granted to 179 existing homes in the Ofarim settlement, said the Peace Now organization.
Britain should apologize for its 1917 declaration endorsing the founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and should recognize Palestine as a state, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday.
“There are things we believe we could achieve in the next months, and there are serious concerns that we all have about the security of the region, the need for stability, the need to protect the two-state solution”, Kerry said in a brief statement.
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Obama said both sides would benefit if Israel recognized it can not permanently occupy the land and if Palestinians rejected incitement and recognized Israel’s legitimacy. Previous attempts at calling for reform through the United Nations have been opposed by the U.S. and often the UK and France which all hold a veto vote. He also rejects Israel’s borders prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as a starting point for negotiations, since that would mean sharing control of Jerusalem with the Palestinians and other significant territorial adjustments.
