Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to meet with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in NY on Sunday, officials involved in planning the meetings told NBC News.
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The Israeli prime minister cited improved ties with African and Asian countries, but said relations with neighboring countries were the most significant change.
Netanyahu rejected the idea of greater United Nations involvement in the peace process.
Taking place Thursday after Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly, where he boasted about his visit this summer to four African countries, the event featured dozens of ambassadors and senior United Nations officials.
On the current deadlock in negotiations with the Palestinians, Netanyahu told Abbas he wants him to address the Knesset and that he’s prepared to “speak peace with the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah”.
“This conflict is not about the settlements; it never was”, he said.
“I am compelled to again warn that what the Israeli government is doing in pursuit of its expansionist settlement plans will destroy whatever possibility and hopes are left for the two-state solution on the 1967 borders”, Abbas said.
“There is a need to allow the Palestinian people to establish an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the two-state solution”, he told the U.N. General Assembly in NY.
“I call on President Abbas: You have a choice to make”.
The declaration, he said, “paved the road for the nakba”, an Arabic term referring to Israel’s victory in its war of independence and the displacement and dispersal of Palestinians that resulted.
“We ask Great Britain, as we approach 100 years since this infamous declaration, to draw the necessary lessons and to bear its historic, legal, political, material and moral responsibility for the consequences of this declaration, including an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created and to act to rectify these disasters and remedy its consequences, including by the recognition of the state of Palestine”, Abbas said.
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Kerry said that there were “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”.
