In a meeting with a delegation of the joint Arab list party in Ramallah on Tuesday night, Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas said he would like to see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu form a coalition government with his Labor and Hatnua “Zionist Union” rivals on the left.
While Netanyahu has already ruled out a unity government with Labor and has the needed majority with 67 MKs supporting his forming of a coalition, Abbas told the Arab MKs that he still hopes to see Labor in the government pushing for “peace talks.” President Reuven Rivlin is to official announce the next prime minister on Wednesday night.
A source from the joint Arab list told NRG that “Abbas told us that they are waiting to see if in the end a unity government will be established in Israel.”
The source added that Abbas “expressed hope that a national unity government will rise, which will advance the peace process, but said that he will be ready to act also with a right-wing government that will advance the process and work towards a two-state solution.”
Abbas torpedoed the last round of peace talks by unilaterally signing international treaties and forming a unity agreement with the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.
Days before the elections, Netanyahu said a Palestinian state would not be founded if he was elected – a position he quickly distanced from, but not before Abbas said a two-state solution would not be possible as long as Netanyahu is in power.
Herzog for his part made clear in late 2013 that his goal is to create a Palestinian state, dividing Jerusalem and making it the capital of two countries.
In the Ramallah meeting, the Arab MKs strengthened Abbas’s “commitment” to the Palestinian national issue and his demand for a “just solution by the international community,” according to the Palestinian Arab WAFA news agency.
The PA is currently pressing for recognition as a state at the UN, a move which US President Barack Obama has threatened to support. The PA is also pushing to try Israel for “war crimes” at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a unilateral move in breach of the 1993 Oslo Accords that created the PA.
The meeting Tuesday was held completely devoid of media coverage, with Arab MKs revealing that the media blackout had been a demand of Abbas, even while claiming there was “nothing to hide.”