Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas expressed disappointment with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday and said the Israeli leader's comments had dealt a blow to efforts to resume peace talks.
An emergency meeting of the Palestinian Authority was held Wednesday in response to Netanyahu’s speech and recent speeches by President Obama on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in which the president endorsed the idea of using 1967 borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories, with mutually agreed land swaps, as a basis to revive peace talks.
Though Netanyahu rejected the idea, Palestinians on Wednesday called upon the U.N. Security Council to accept and implement Obama's proposal.
Abbas said at the meeting he hadn’t given up on revival of talks with Israel but would not hesitate to go to the U.N. in September -- Palestinians’ deadline for progress -- to ask the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, in spite of strong U.S. opposition to that move.
Abbas added that going to the U.N. was not “intended to isolate Israel or to de-legitimize it.”
-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank
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