Abbas: Netanyahu Agreed to Palestinian State Along ’67 Borders’
August 28, 2014Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas claimed on Thursday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed to establish a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders, a claim that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) denied.
Abbas, who spoke in a televised interview and quoted by the Ma’an news agency, said that Netanyahu had agreed to the Palestinian state and that the only thing left to negotiate was the exact borders.
“We will not go into a discussion about area A, B, and C. We need each state to finally determine their borders. Israel is the only state in the world with no known borders,” he said.
Abbas added that chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and intelligence chief Majid Farraj will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry next week to discuss negotiations.
“We are willing to wait a day, a week or a month,” Abbas said, “but not 20 more years.”
“If they agree, we will be free with our borders. We will not accept that Israel launches a war against us every two years,” he added, promising that if Israel refused he would be ready to respond.
“We will not forgive and Israel will not get away with its crimes. We have a lot of ways and tools to ensure that criminals don’t get away with their crimes,” Abbas declared, according to Ma’an.
“The Israeli assault wanted a chance to kill and destroy,” he said. “The occupation wishes to close its eyes and re-open them to find no Palestinians in sight.”
Abbas’s claims regarding Netanyahu’s supposed agreement to a Palestinian state comes hours after a Jordanian daily reported that Netanyahu and Abbas met in Amman last week.
The report quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the meeting occurred several days before the latest ceasefire in the fighting between Israel and Hamas came into effect Tuesday. The report did not specify what the two spoke about, but did say that Abbas was expected to be an important factor in the upcoming indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
The PMO on Thursday evening rejected both Abbas’s claims regarding Netanyahu’s agreement to a Palestinian state and the report that the two leaders met in Jordan.
Regarding Netanyahu’s agreement to a Palestinian state, the PMO said that “it never happened”.
As for the supposed meeting between the two, the PMO said that Netanyahu and Abbas have not met in recent months.
Earlier this week, Abbas’s aides said that he will soon appeal to the international community to set a deadline for Israel to withdraw back to the pre-1967 borders and make way for an independent Palestinian state.
The effort is part of the PA’s continuous efforts to achieve a state unilaterally and in direct violation of the Oslo Accords. In 2012, the PA unilaterally turned to the United Nations and received recognition as a non-member observer state by the General Assembly.
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