Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said on Tuesday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas doesn’t 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 come together as a united front.
He continued and said 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 President Mahmoud 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.
The so called negotiations have been a farce from the very beginning but it has served the purpose of the Palestinians as well as the left leaning so called right wing Likud. To believe that the Palestinians really want peace with Israel requires a degree of insanity. What they really want and receive through these talks is lots of money,sympathy and media and political attention.What the Israeli government gets is the avoidance of the harsh reality that the only way to deal with the Palestinians is not through discussion which lead nowhere, but as a conqueror willing to inflict its’ will on the conquered.
@ rfelsted:
Not meaning to rain on your parade, BUT,
we are talking about the world that has allowed a systematic murder of six million of our brethren…
A world that has allowed the armament of the Arabs to the teeth, while the few Jews in then-Palestine, were subject to arms embargo…
A world that has allowed the crossing of the Suez Canal and the free for all killing of Israeli soldiers (Kissinger [may his name be erased!!!] : “we have to let the Jews bleed a little “), made sure that Sharon’s brilliant move to encircle the Egyptian 3rd army was for naught!!!!
A world that has seen THOUSANDS of Israeli civilians murdered and injured and it does not even make the news (exactly HOW MANY ROCKETS have fallen on sderot????)
But when a FAKE photograph of a musloid +son is published….. THAT, goes viral….
Sorry mr felsted, as far as Jews go, in the immortal words of Ted
“They don’t give a shit!”
And THAT, you can take to the bank.
@ David Chase:
Very well said! As ugly and horrible-at-times this “process” has been, I can agree that it’s a blessing in disguise because of the clear picture of Abbas and the PA that has emerged. Although clear to those of us on this forum before the talks even began, it has now gone “viral” for the world to see.
The PLO has run into the arms of Hamas before. It should be noted the Palestinian Arabs can no more live in peace with each other than they could ever live in peace with Israel. There is not a single agreement they have ever honored. Israel should not prostitute itself in front of them for a non-existent peace deal.
As distasteful as some of the concessions we’ve made have been I always felt that if the process was kept alive ultimately it would really call the Palestinians bluff as I lent to the idea that Netanyahu understood this. That is exactly what unfolded. Now nobody can seriously argue that the breakdown of the talks are our fault which is what we needed. Obama’s stupidity turns out to be our blessing. Now the discussion can begin to change. We’re finally getting off the deadly medication.