Israel Policy Forum: It is impossible to view Abbas as a viable negotiating
partner
Statement on President Abbas's Remarks
https://israelpolicyforum.org/2018/01/15/statement-on-president-abbass-remarks/
Israel Policy Forum expresses its disgust over President Abbas’s words to
the Fatah Central Committee delegitimizing Zionism, denying the Jewish
connection to the land of Israel, and peddling conspiracy theories about the
plight of European Jewry. It is impossible to view Abbas as a viable
negotiating partner when he continues to deny the right of the Jewish
people to their own national movement and when he continues to insist that
the basic recognition of a Jewish homeland is the original sin of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The injustice of Palestinians remaining
stateless cannot and will not be rectified by a fever dream that wishes for
a world in which Jews would also be stateless and in which Israel would
not exist.
Words matter, and if Abbas’s commitment to nonviolence is worthy of praise,
his commitment to vitriolic rhetoric is equally worthy of condemnation.
Abbas’s unhinged screed provides ammunition to those who insist that the
sole obstacle to peace is Palestinian denial of Israel’s legitimacy, making
his hateful words instrumentally harmful as well as being utterly without
merit in their own right. With his distortion of history and denial of
reality, Abbas makes himself part of the problem rather than part of the
solution.
Israel and the Palestinians must reach a two-state solution that recognizes
both sides’ legitimate claims and narratives, and President Abbas must
unequivocally recognize these mutual rights if he is to be a credible
partner in the quest for peace.
|
