Hamas urges Abbas to renounce Oslo Accords at UN speech
PA slams Trump for "intentionally ignoring" Palestinians
By KHALED ABU TOAMEHPalestinians take part in a rally marking the 31st anniversary of Hamas' founding, in Gaza City(photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA / REUTERS)Hamas has called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to renounce the Oslo Accords with Israel during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.On the eve of Abbas’s speech, Hamas said in a statement that “the time has come for the PA leadership to announce to the world its decision to renounce the disastrous Oslo Accords after 25 years of political illusion that has brought on our people nothing but additional suffering, land theft, and the desecration of holy sites.”Last July, Abbas announced that the PA leadership has decided to form a committee to study setting up a mechanism for “halting work related to all signed agreements” with Israel. His critics have dismissed the announcement as yet another “empty threat,” pointing out that it remains unclear whether the proposed committee had ever been formed.PA officials in Ramallah said that Abbas was expected to announce during his speech that the Palestinians will hold a new parliamentary election. Abbas is also expected to repeat his appeal for convening an international conference for peace in the Middle East and again call for providing international protection for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the officials added.The last Palestinian parliamentary election, held in January 2006, resulted in a Hamas victory. The Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform list won 74 seats of the 132 seats of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction won only 45 seats.The PLC has been paralyzed since Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Abbas recently decided to dissolve the PLC, drawing sharp criticism from his political rivals.The continued dispute between Hamas and Fatah has prevented thew two parties from holding long overdue parliamentary and presidential elections. The last presidential election was held in January 2005, when Abbas was elected for a four-year-term.In its statement, Hamas called on Abbas to use his speech to remind the world of the “suffering of our people that is caused by the Israeli occupation with continued American backing at the expense of the rights of our people.”The terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip asked Abbas to be frank with the international community about the “peace process mirage so that it would become clear to world leaders that our people are fed up with the world’s collusion with the Zionist enemy and the inability of the UN to implement any of the resolutions it took in favor of our people over the past few decades.”Hamas reminded Abbas of the importance of achieving Palestinian national unity and ending the Hamas-Fatah rift, adding that this was the only way “to persuade the world to support the rights of our people.”
The movement stressed the need to “end the blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is starving two million Palestinians, and recognize the right of our people to resist the occupation with all forms of resistance.” It urged Abbas to move make an effort to end the Hamas-Fatah dispute “on the basis of full partnership so that it would serve as a starting point for confronting the occupation and US-led schemes designed to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”Meanwhile, the PA Foreign Ministry lashed out at US President Donald Trump for “intentionally ignoring” the Palestinian issue during his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.The ministry said that the Trump administration’s “full bias” in favor of Israel and its policies does not help in achieving peace and disqualifies the US from sponsoring the peace process and any meaningful and serious negotiations with Israel.“Trump’s disregard for the Palestinian cause in his speech at the UN General Assembly requires swift international action to launch an international conference that would create a multilateral mechanism for overseeing the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians,” the PA ministry said.The ministry accused Trump of working to encourage Israel to “commit more crimes and violations against Palestinians by bypassing the Palestinian cause and the Israeli-Arab conflict focusing, instead, on other crises in the region while ignoring the presence of the occupation and its threat to security and stability in the Middle East and the world.”
