Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestinians cannot and will not recognize Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state, Al Ray correspondence reports.Palestinians ‘…cannot recognize a Jewish state,’ Mr. Abbas decalred, in an interview with Egypt’s Akhbar Al-Yawm daily news:
‘We will stand against this enterprise, not out of obstinacy, but because it contradicts our interests.”
He reaffirmed the presence of six million Palestinian refugees, including himself, who’ve become homeless since the beginning of the Israeli occupation, in 1948. (Palestinians now make up the largest refugee population on the planet, according to United Nations statistics.)
‘Working with Israel is very difficult, if not impossible,’ he added.
‘We are conducting mutual relations with people who don’t believe in peace. You ask for peace, and they do not want it…”
The president also reiterated the Palestinian call for an independent state based on the pre-1967 boundaries, and an end to the Israeli occupation.
‘We want a state in the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and we want to [set] a date to end the occupation. That is all we want. If Israel agrees to this now, we will go to negotiations. [But] they use deception and excel at media fraud,” Abbas said.
On May 17, 2014, almost all countries in the United Nations voted in favor of Resolution 58/292 stipulating that the borders of a Palestinian state should be based on the pre-1967 borders.
‘If we cannot get what we want, there are other steps [we can take]. The first step is joining many international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice,” Abbas further added.
“There are 520 international organizations, and [joining them] will surely bother everyone. If there is an appeal to the ICC, and a Palestinian files a lawsuit against an Israeli, they [the Israelis] get scared, because they are wanted and cannot travel.’
Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of occupied East Jerusalem.
