Abbas slams Israel’s ‘brute force’
OSLO ACCORDS: Frustrated Palestinian president threatens to tear up agreements
The president of the Palestinian Authority threatened to rip up the Oslo peace accords Wednesday in his most serious warning yet that he might walk away from engagement with Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas said that unless the Israeli government changed its behaviour the Oslo agreements — which govern cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians and lay out a road map for peace — would no longer stand.
“We cannot continue to be bound by these agreements,” he said, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “Continuation of the status quo is completely unacceptable because it means surrender to the logic of the brute force being inflicted by the Israeli government.”
Although Abbas stopped short of accompanying his threat with a deadline or giving any specifics, the move is sure to heighten tensions in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to denounce Abbas’ speech. In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said Abbas’ “speech of lies encourages incitement and unrest in the Middle East.”
Netanyahu called on Abbas to “act responsibly” and answer his proposal for direct negotiations with Israel without any preconditions.
Abbas’ comments reflect deep frustration, even desperation. It came after years of paralysis in attempts to negotiate Palestinian statehood with Israel and several months after Netanyahu formed a right-wing government that has continued settlement expansion on war-won lands the Palestinians want for their state.
With negotiations frozen, Abbas has failed to come up with a political alternative.
His hopes of creating a Palestinian state through negotiations with Israel have been derailed. Abbas said Israel’s refusal to commit to agreements signed “render us an authority without real powers.”
“As long as Israel refuses to cease settlement activities and to the release of the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with our agreements, they leave us no choice but to insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them,” Abbas said.
“We therefore declare that we cannot continue to be bound by these agreements and that Israel must assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power,” he declared.
If Abbas were to go through with his demand that Israel, as the “occupying power”, assume responsibility for the Palestinians, this would require dissolving the Palestinian Authority and the resignation of Abbas. He didn’t mention any of this in his speech.
“It is no longer useful to waste time in negotiations for the sake of negotiations; what is required is to mobilize international efforts to oversee an end to the occupation in line with the resolutions of international legitimacy,” he said.
In general, international law principles say parties cannot unilaterally withdraw from treaties such as the Oslo Accords unless there has been a “material breach” of the agreement. But what constitutes a material breach in this instance would be a contentious topic.
On a day that saw the Palestinian flag was raised at the UN, he also offered an olive branch. “I say to the Israeli people that peace is in your interest, in our interest, and in the interest of our future generations.”