Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Friday of not
"believing in peace"
and of undermining the two-state solution, a speech denounced by the Israelis.
Speaking before the UN General Assembly, the 87-year-old Palestinian leader said Israel was
“premeditated and deliberately undermining the two-state solution”
and acting with
“complete impunity”
in the occupied territories .
“This unequivocally proves that Israel does not believe in peace.
He wants to impose the status quo by force and aggression.
So we no longer have an Israeli partner to talk to
,” he said.
He stressed that Israel was carrying out a settlement campaign in the Palestinian territories and gave its army
"complete freedom"
to kill or use excessive force against the Palestinians.
“Here is the truth: it is an apartheid regime
,” he said, demanding that Israel be held accountable for
“its massacres”
and accusing the international community of
“protecting”
the Jewish state.
The Palestinian leader reiterated his call for Israel to be brought before the International Criminal Court.
“President Abbas is using the UN as a platform to incite hatred against Israel, while glorifying the terrorists he funds himself,”
replied Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan.
"With a diatribe filled with lies and completely detached from reality, he has once again proven his utter uselessness."
The day before, at the UN podium, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid had affirmed that
“a large majority of Israelis support this vision of the two-state solution and I am one of them.
We have only
one condition: that a future Palestinian state be peaceful”.
In his speech Wednesday at the UN, US President Joe Biden also reiterated his support for the creation of a Palestinian state but without announcing any particular initiative to relaunch negotiations.
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have stalled since 2014.
