Abbas Says Palestinians No Longer Bound by Pacts With Israel

UNITED NATIONS— Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared before world leaders Wednesday that he is no longer bound by agreements signed with Israel and called on the United Nations to provide international protection for Palestinians, in the most...
Abbas Says Palestinians No Longer Bound by Pacts With Israel
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, gestures after addressing the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2015 at U.N. Headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The Associated Press
9/30/2015
Updated:
9/30/2015

UNITED NATIONS— Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared before world leaders Wednesday that he is no longer bound by agreements signed with Israel and called on the United Nations to provide international protection for Palestinians, in the most serious warning yet that he might walk away from engagement with the Jewish state.

Abbas, however, stopped short of accompanying his threat with a deadline or giving any specifics, leaving room for diplomatic maneuvers to refocus the world’s attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abbas did not say how he will move forward. He also avoided mentioning a mainstay of Israeli-Palestinian relations — security coordination between his security forces and Israeli forces in the West Bank against a shared enemy, the Islamic militant group Hamas.

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More than 300 ministers, diplomats and well-wishers crowded into the rose garden at U.N. headquarters where a temporary flagpole had been erected for the ceremony which took place following Abbas’ speech.

The Palestinians campaigned for a General Assembly resolution, overwhelmingly approved on Sept. 10, that allows U.N. observer states to fly their flags alongside those of the 193 U.N. member states. The Holy See and the Palestinians and are the only two U.N. observer states.

In a harshly worded essay ahead of his Wednesday address to the United Nations, the Palestinian president said a new multilateral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is needed since direct negotiations with Israel have repeatedly failed.

Abbas said the model should be based instead on the type of negotiations that took place in the Balkans, Libya and Iran.

“The peace process must be multilateral. The same pattern of negotiations imposed for years will not work because Israel is the occupying power,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Huffington Post.

While Abbas’ Palestinian Authority rules over most of the West Bank Palestinian population, Israel still controls much of the territory.