TEL AVIV — Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to call on the UN General Assembly to determine Palestinian state borders when it convenes in two weeks, according to Dalal Salama, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee.
As stated by Salama, Fatah’s Central Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss the Palestinian president’s message for the UN before Abbas travels to New York to address the General Assembly.
The focus of Abbas’ speech, according to Salama, will be, “the need to turn the country of Palestine from a UN member state to a real state. The president will call on the UN to determine the borders of the Palestinian state.
“The call to dictate the borders is already established in UN resolutions,” said Salama. “But we expect a clear and official decision from the UN that will clarify the decision in order to deal with the settlement policy of the occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem and in order to deal with the occupation’s plan to divide the Gaza Strip from the West Bank. That’s why we want the UN to establish the borders of our independent country.”
Salama didn’t mention that the Palestinians turned down successive Israeli offers of a state.
Fatah officials warned last month on the eve of a visit to the region by U.S. delegates Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt that if U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace efforts are unsuccessful, the Palestinians would speed up their appeal to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state.
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki also issued a warning, saying that there won’t be peace without the creation of a Palestinian state.
Salama’s comments come despite reports that the Palestinian Authority leadership made commitments before Trump’s emissaries to the Middle East to halt their unilateral appeals to international institutions for a number of months against Israel with the intention of advancing the creation of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, a member of the PLO executive committee told Breitbart Jerusalem, “If there is no real breakthrough in the political process that establishes a clear timeline for the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, President Abbas will tell Trump and the American government that he will dismantle the Palestinian Authority and the international community can take responsibility for the lives of the millions of Palestinians who will continue to live in a regime of occupation.”
The Palestinians have made similar threats in the past but nothing came of them.
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