Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said on Tuesday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not really want peace with Israel and instead has gone to make peace with Hamas."Now it appears that Abbas is bluffing. He is not willing to make concessions, he turned to the UN and he ran to hug Hamas instead," Katz said on his Facebook page.The Likud minister added that "negotiations are essentially over" and now is the time for Israel to come together as a united front.He added that the first step that Israel needs to take is to cancel the plans for a road that would connect Gaza to the West Bank. He said Israel does not owe the Palestinians anything and that the road would interfere with Israel's sovereignty.Katz also said that the dismantling of the PA, as Abbas recently threatened to do, would have many negative implications. "If the PA does dissolve, the immunity granted to top PLO officials under the Oslo Accords will be cancelled, and every contact MK Ahmed Tibi has with Abbas will be thought of as contact with an enemy.""We have a great country, we are righteous and we will win," Katz said.Palestinian officials in Ramallah on Monday denied that the Palestinian Authority has been considering dissolving itself if the peace talks with Israel fail.
Some officials were quoted over the past few days as saying that Abbas has threatened to dismantle the PA in protest against the lack of progress in the negotiations.
The reported threat, which comes as the April 29 deadline for the end of the peace talks approaches, is seen as an attempt to exert pressure on the US and Israel to comply with Palestinian demands, especially regarding the release of prisoners.
