XPost: soc.history.war.misc, or.politics, seattle.politics

from https://www.timesofisrael.com/ad-libbed-at-the-general-assembly-mahmoud-abbass-full-blown-rejectionism/

Ad-libbed at the General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas’s full-blown rejectionism Speaking at the UN’s Nakba fest, the PA chief contradicted his previous assurances to Israel. In a reflection of the collapse of negotiation
prospects, hardly anyone even noticed

David Horovitz
By DAVID HOROVITZ
18 May 2023, 5:33 am

Key in his lapel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
addresses a Nakba Day event at the United Nations General Assembly in
New York, May 15, 2023 (Ed Jones / AFP)

For years, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has delivered speeches, at the UN and elsewhere, inciting viciously against Israel — describing Zionism as a colonial enterprise unrelated to Judaism,
denying Jewish history in the Holy Land, accusing Israel of carrying out “holocausts” against the Palestinians…

Often, his most incendiary remarks are ad-libbed — absent from the
officially distributed, presumably carefully prepared texts of his
addresses. Remarks thrown in at his pleasure, and thus the most faithful expression of what he really believes and wants to say.

Sponsored by Sheba: The Stem Cell Revolution at Sheba Medical Center

Pause
Next playlist item
Unmute
Picture-in-Picture
Fullscreen
Close

Such was the case at the UN General Assembly’s anti-Israel Nakba fest on Monday. This was an unprecedented event convened to highlight the “catastrophe” that befell the Palestinians with the revival of Israel in 1948 — the “catastrophe,” that is, that stemmed from the Arab world’s violent rejection of the UN’s endorsement in 1947 of the Jewish people’s right to the revival of their ancient Jewish homeland alongside what was
to have been a first-ever Palestinian state.

Abbas, as has become his norm, utilized the forum to castigate the UK,
the US and the international community for supporting the Jewish
people’s right to statehood and, departing from his prepared text,
accused Israel of utilizing Nazi-style propaganda to advance its narrative.

But the Palestinian Authority president also ad-libbed a highly
significant reversal of his previously stated positions, a change of
stance that shows him now rejecting not only any Israeli presence and
claims in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, but also Israel’s legitimacy in its pre-1967 borders, while demanding the termination of
Israel as a majority-Jewish state.

In years past, Abbas was reliably reported to have made clear that he
did not expect Israel to take in millions of descendants of Palestinians
made homeless during the fighting that surrounded the establishment of
Israel, since this would remake Israel’s demographics and turn the
world’s only Jewish state into a binational Jewish-Palestinian entity.
“On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5
million, or even 1 million – that would mean the end of Israel,” Abbas
was quoted telling his own peace negotiators in 2008, for example, in
documents reported by Al Jazeera.

Citing his own circumstances, moreover, Abbas told Israeli television in
2012 that the Palestinians under his leadership sought statehood only in
the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war and had no claims on pre-1967 Israel, and that he himself, a refugee from Safed in northern
Israel, did not consider that he had the right to return to live there.

“Palestine now for me is the ’67 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” said Abbas to Channel 12. “This is now and forever … This is Palestine for me. I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah… I believe
that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other parts are Israel.”

He vouchsafed that he had visited Safed, and would like to do so again,
but did not expect to make it his home: “It’s my right to see it, but
not to live there,” he declared.

In New York on Monday, in stark contrast, Abbas, sporting a little key
in his lapel to signify the Palestinian demand for a “right of return,” reversed his 2012 Israeli TV interview promise.

“I am a Palestinian refugee. I want to return to my land,” he told the General Assembly. “I want Safed,” he specified, to warm applause.

It is a reflection of how irrelevant and hopeless the notion of solving
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become — with Israel shifted to the right since the Second Intifada suicide-bombing onslaught, and now led
by an unprecedentedly hard-right coalition — that this drastically
changed stance barely registered in the reporting of the Nakba event and Abbas’s address to it.

Abbas, at 87, is a fading force who evidently has decided he wishes to
be remembered as a leader in the Yasser Arafat mold whose rejectionist positions doomed the Palestinian quest for statehood. Meanwhile, the
Islamist Hamas, consolidating its hold on Gaza and relentlessly building
up its forces toward its undimmed goal of eliminating the Jewish state,
is working assiduously to supplant the Palestinian Authority — thwarted, ironically, by the security forces of the very Israel that Abbas demonizes.


You're a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read 7 Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the
Jewish world.

So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for
whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work
by joining The Times of Israel Community.

For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism
while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing
exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)