Palestine deserves full membership and recognition as a state at the United Nations, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
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Abbas wrote in a blog post for The Huffington Post on Tuesday that he had held “high hopes” after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which facilitated Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation and laid out a road map for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank by 1998.
The United States voted against the resolution. The two-state solution, widely backed by United Nations member states, means a secure Israel to live with an independent State of Palestine.
Netanyahu’s comments came in response to harsh criticism from the Palestinian leader during his speech before the UN General Assembly.
Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog says Mahmoud Abbas’s reference to Israel as an apartheid state in his speech to the United Nations “distorts” the truth and “only benefit the extremists on both sides”.
Since 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza, which has caused a serious decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty in the Palestinian territory.
At the time, Israel’s United Nations representative Ron Prosor said the move was a “blatant attempt to hijack the UN”, insisting that the only way Palestinians could achieve statehood was through direct negotiations.
“What the Palestinians need from the United Nations is an acknowledgement of its historic role in dispossessing the Palestinians”, Tamimi said.
A recent poll found that Palestinians are increasingly exasperated with his leadership and Israel’s right-wing government.
Hamad said that Palestinians were in a “dire situation” as Israeli settlements continue to rapidly expand and tensions soar at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, where clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli forces have occurred on a near-daily basis in recent weeks.
Abbas’s speech was heavily anticipated after he hinted earlier that he would drop a bombshell, leading a few to believe Abbas could resign.
“The General Assembly’s vote confirmed again that we, the people of Palestine, are not alone in our quest for freedom, fulfillment of our rights and an end to decades of Israeli occupation and oppression”.
While such an announcement could potentially have a major impact, many analysts question whether Abbas would truly press ahead with it.
The peace process has been in the doldrums since the latest USA diplomatic effort failed in April a year ago.
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In a shift, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League have been invited to the meeting, along with the foreign ministers of Russian Federation, the United States and European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini.
