Abbas Slams Netanyahu’s Speech: Without Talks, Palestinians to Head to U.N.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday slammed a speech by Israel's prime minister and said the Palestinians would seek U.N. recognition if peace talks don't resume.
"Our first choice is negotiations, but if there is no progress before September we will go to the United Nations," Abbas said, criticizing a speech by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday.
In his address, Netanyahu repeated a litany of well-known Israeli demands of the Palestinians but broke no new political ground nor did he offer any incentives for breaking the deadlock in peace talks.
Netanyahu's words were "a long way from the peace process" and contained "errors and distortions," the Palestinian leader told reporters in Ramallah.
The Israeli leader, who addressed Congress on the last day of a trip to Washington, said he was willing to make "painful compromises" for peace.
But he ruled out a division of Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the possibility of using the borders that existed before 1967 as a basis for peace negotiations.
In a key policy speech on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama called for new talks based on the armistice lines in place before the 1967 Six Day War.
But Netanyahu used the trip to reject the 1967 lines as "indefensible" and insist that Israel would never accept them as a basis for negotiations.
Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters that Netanyahu's speech showed that "Israel's government is not a partner ... in the peace process.
"He has already decided the outcome of the negotiations on final status issued without talks and by laying down dictates," Erakat added.
Source: Agence France Presse
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