Palestinian President had referred to as for the vote by the PLO parliament, and a postponement till the top of the yr can be a blow to his management.
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Abbas will urge Obama to make the resolution of the century-old conflict and recognition of a Palestinian state a priority in his final year-anda-half in office, longtime Palestinian negotiator Mohammad Shtayyeh said. It’s not clear at this stage whether Abbas will seek reelection during the PNC session.
The parliament was to have chosen new PLO leaders and to have considered a more confrontational policy toward Israel, after years of impasse in negotiations on Palestinian statehood.
Mr Shtayyeh, 57, who sits on the central committee of the PLO’s ruling Fatah party, declined to elaborate when asked about Mr Abbas’s future plans.
Meanwhile, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the larger PLO factions, chose to boycott the parliament meeting for lack of proper preparation, Rafaat said. Hundreds of officials from across the political spectrum are scheduled to gather on September 14 for the first meeting since 1996 of the Palestinian National Council.
He said the U.S. should follow the more than 130 countries that already have recognized the Palestinian state on the pre- 1967 lines. He took these leadership positions in 2004 and 2005, in the wake of Yasser Arafat’s death.
Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, said such an agreement also should include the reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.
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In July, Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), said Tel Aviv is not interested in reaching a deal with the Palestinians.
